


For Who Could Ever Learn to Love a Beast?

by Royalrastafariannaynays



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angst, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Body Horror, Fluff, Humanstuck sorta, Just a little bit of Angst, M/M, POV Dave Strider, POV Karkat Vantas, beast karkat, bro's not a scumbag, sorta - Freeform, terezi is the witch, will not include traditional beauty and the beast stockholm syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 21:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5390447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Royalrastafariannaynays/pseuds/Royalrastafariannaynays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat is just having an awful birthday. It's raining, cold, and he has finals tomorrow. Literally the only thing that could make it worse would be if some witch from six hundred years ago decided to come cast a curse on him that would make him into some ugly horned monster until he could find true love. If true love is even a thing.</p><p> </p><p>Will update probably Mondays or Sundays</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there lovely readers! I'm several chapters ahead on my other AU, have a lot of spare time, and got a wild hair to write another one! This is my Beauty and the Beast AU, using elements from several different versions of the story so it's not quite Grimm and not quite Disney, haha. 
> 
> I hope you all enjoy and have fun reading! ^_^

You almost got hit by a car on your way home, and you’d think the universe would realize that this was enough to put on you at once. Then you also got almost hit by another car that decided to drive by and splash you with the grossest, coldest gutter puddle you’ve ever seen. 

Tired and aching and miserable, you lock the front door and head upstairs to change clothes and take a hot shower. Miss Gonzalez, your housekeeper, is on her way out and takes your proffered umbrella in one hand “no, you take it, I have plenty more” and hands you a clean, fluffy towel with the other. 

“The last month’s payment will be in the mail, and you got that contact of my mother’s friend in New Hampshire for when you move, yes?” You ask, dropping your bag on the kitchen counter.

“Yes, Sir,” she replies with a grateful smile. 

“Alright then, I’ll put in a good word for you,” you add, and start heading upstairs. “I hope you have a good life there.”

“Thank you, Karkat!” she calls after you, and you can hear her humming as she closes the front door. You need to hire someone new for cleaning. With finals and Sra. Gonzalez moving to be closer to her aging parents, you hadn’t yet had enough time for interviews. It kind of sucked to think about, anyway. She had been with your family since before….

Well, since before. 

Sniffling, you turn on the shower and hope you aren’t forming a cold. Your world mythology final is tomorrow, and you still need to finish that paper on the fantasy stories of northern France. Information is steadily cycling through your head, and keeps coming around to settle on the fucking witch story you’re working on, with the mostly benevolent crone who likes to cast spells on those who reject her company. 

This is such a specific topic. 

A new hole is found in the T shirt you pull off.

“Just everything I needed on my birthday.”

\--

A small _pan tres leches_ is waiting for you on the counter when you get back to your school bag and it makes you want to cry. That was the cake she made you every birthday since your parents died. It hits you that you’re very alone in this house. Maybe you should get a cat. 

The coffee maker dings and you see that she had also put a pot on for you before she left, knowing you would be cold and damp and studying tonight. God, how will you survive without someone to take care of you?

The door creaks, then slams shut just behind you.

“Hello, Karkat Vantas.”

A scream erupts from your mouth and you turn to look at the source of the voice that sounds like the hissing of steam or the slipping of scales on leaves. 

It’s a woman with a large teal cloak and lips, grey skin and pointed teeth and nails. Her eyes are two bright red, fiery and shining orbs with no visible center. The fight or flight response in your brain is kicked on, and you feel like you’re being hunted. 

“Who the fuck are you?!” Astute.

She grins wickedly and replies. “My mother called me Terezi, but that was… _centuries_ ago.”

The top of her head comes into the light as she leans forward, and the sharp horns atop her head seem to shine translucently. “Though, you can call me Redglare.”

Where had you heard that name before? 

“Please get out. I don’t even know how you got in here, but if you’re planning on killing me, you should do it tomorrow after my finals.” 

She pushes her cloak back with one clawed hand, dripping in gold and jewels (probably costume jewelry), and pulls out a single scarlet rose that seems like it’s glowing with a light to match the depth of her eyes. “Would you like this in exchange for not making me leave?”

“No. Leave.”

“You would send a woman out in the rain?” The words are heavy with age and intent, and she doesn’t seem too broken up about the whole being thrown out part. You bristle, still wanting to flee but not having much else to do.

“Antiquated gender ideas aside, I would send anyone out in the cold and rain! It’s my house and you’re trespassing! Not to mention the weird and ugly costume you’re wearing! Jesus who told you it was just fucking fine to raid party city and then break into someone’s home in the middle of the night?!”

Redglare gets a look on her face that you recognize from somewhere in your past; she looks like you’re fucking up and she’ll reap the bounteous crapping spoils from the whole thing. It’s the same look someone gets when they have three houses on Park Place in Monopoly, and you land in it.

That _“oh finally”_ look of almost orgasmic anticipation.

Her hand comes out to touch your chin, and you’re still as stone. A wildfire suddenly races across your skin and you grunt with the effort of remaining conscious. 

“Now hear me, mortal,” she begins. “For refusing my boon there is but one price you can pay.”

Bones shift under your skin, and you get a piercing pain through your head and in your fingertips. Everything hurts, suddenly. Your skin feels as if it’s ripping and turning inside out, stretching strangely. 

A mirror that you can see from the floor where you now lay collapsed shows a wretched thing.

A single red stiletto blocks the view.

You can only groan on the floor as she continues to talk, tears in your eyes as the walls of your kitchen shake and the cracks between the tiles glow the same teal as her venomous lips.

“In five years, on your twenty-fifth birthday, this rose will wilt,” she says first. Her fingers place the rose in an empty large pickle jar on the counter. The lid twists on seemingly of its own accord.

“Oh god.”

“And if you can’t find true love, and have them love you in return, by the time the last petal falls,” she hangs it off like she’s going to deliver a punchline.

“Seriously?” Everything still hurts but small details are becoming more clear.

“You will end up like me. Like this. Forever.”

“Fuck you,” you punctuate for her. Everything is so _bright._

“Goodbye, Karkat Vantas.” She leans down to kiss your cheek, and you wince as much as you can before she just disappears. 

Agony fills the fiber of your being as you attempt becoming vertical. Your arms feel too long, your feet entirely too big for your shoes. Pain pricks at your palms and you look down and notice that your hands end in almost talon-like claws. Your hands that are now… gray.

“This is just a bad dream.”

The piece of cake you never finished seems to laugh at you.

You finish your homework and go to bed.

\--

Last night you told yourself you had consumed too much coffee, and you go to school the next day. You do not look in any mirrors on the way out. You pull a hood up over your head and are grateful that it’s unseasonably cool here this time of ear, because you also have to put on a thin pair of gloves. You’ve been studying too hard, surely your nails don’t look that bad.

None of your clothes seem to fit right.

You go to take your final, grateful for how unnoticeable you are on a regular basis. You bump your head on the bus door, which is odd. You are about to leave campus, deciding a walk home and some fresh air at the end of the school year will do you good, when Sollux comes up behind you and yanks down your hood. “Hey man, barely recognized you, how was your… birthday… whoa.”

“What’s with the horns?” You give him a questioning look, and before you can react, Sollux reaches up and pulls at something on top of your head. It hurts, and you snarl.

Your whole group of friends is there on the crowded sidewalk and they back off suddenly. You bite your lip to suffocate a hiss of fear. Everyone passing by seems to pause a bit and stare. 

“Had fun with the gray face paint, KK?” Aradia laughs as Sollux says that, and you’re horrified. Oh god, it’s real. You can’t stop your teeth from baring and flashing in the sunlight, and you hear some freshmen walking by scream half-seriously. There’s a good sized crowd watching you now. 

“I have to go,” you manage to get out, and as you turn, Tavros catches you by the arm. Before you or he knows it, Tavros is on the ground, blood gushing out of four parallel scratch marks that go all the way down his arm. 

You look down at your hand, and there’s red blood there too. Tavros is looking at you half with horror, half with pain and pity, his Mohawk seems to wilt a little as he sinks a little further down away from you. You reach out to him, to do what you don’t know.

There’s another scream, this time closer. 

“I’m sorry, Tav, I’m-”

Pain pierces through your side as someone throws a rock at you.

Gamzee is crouching next to Tavros, wrapping his extra shirt around his bleeding arm. 

You crouch, a few pebbles hit your face and a few people are yelling, some in fear. You hurt Tavros, how could you? What is wrong with you? What a freak, what a monster. _A monster._

A larger rock hits your collarbone, obviously meant for your face, and you have to back away. Your friends are cowering from you. They neither throw stones nor defend you. They just watch as you back away and more rocks pelt at you from the slightly larger crowd of surrounding students. What is this, the crucible?

Gamzee meets your eyes. He stares at you without anger, but also without pity or care or even familiarity. “Leave,” he utters, barely moving his mouth as smoke from his forgotten cigarette drips off his tongue. The fire of hatred burns his teeth black and sends you reeling. Your best… friend.

You can only run, now.

Home, beaten, and bloody, you smash the hall mirror with your bloody hand. The blood will stain the Persian rug in the foyer but you cannot care. 

A pickle jar, softly glowing with the light of the enchanted rose within, comes into your sight. 

You pick it up to smash it, are lifting the thing above your head.

But you can’t.

You cradle the jar in your arms, sit down on the kitchen floor and cry. You fall asleep there.

You want to fall asleep forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is humanstuck, sorta, so the friends karkat has at university are all human, and karkat is human until he is cursed! Only the first chapter is karkat POV, the rest will be dave! 
> 
> I was going to post it all in one chapter, but doing multiple gives me more leeway right now! :) (also I'm not much of a marathon writer)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave's POV from here on out unless I get a wild urge! ^_^

FOUR YEARS AND SOME MONTHS LATER

A puddle splashes up on your exposed ankle as you speed your bike down the road. You just truck through it, seeing as swerving would make you lose balance. 

Why would we lose balance, Dave?

Because you deliver groceries to pay for the tuition for your second undergrad degree, and they’re heavy.

Why are we on a bike, Dave?

Because you don’t have a car.

How does this job work for us, Dave?

You get a list in an email from your weird employer Meenah every week, and lists for everyone on that list. They pay the amount that the groceries average at ahead of time plus service fees, and you get a cut of the fees and the grocery money ahead of time, plus a small amount from your employer based on miles you log on an approved app on your phone. 

They also give you tips that your employer asked you not inform her about. The tips can get hefty.

Normally you just deliver to old people who can’t go out shopping on their own, or rich families on Jones Street. 

But at the end of Jones Street there’s something peculiar. A modestly painted Victorian-style mansion, at the very end of another decently long road off of the main avenue. It’s a pale peach color, you think washed out. You deliver to this house every Tuesday, around three PM, and you’re careful not to question it.

You make good tip money from this one, if you follow instructions. This being after that first few weeks of being their new grocery delivery boy and bringing frozen stuff up still frozen.

The first time you delivered here, you were left specific instructions by your boss in the email to put in the code she sent you, and leave the bags by the front door, just outside. With the old ladies, you’re generally expected to bring them in. Again, you don’t question it, because of the fat envelope always waiting for you at the top of the stairs underneath the decorative rock next to the door. 

It generally pays your entire rent cumulatively every three weeks and then the last week you have money to put into saving for your car. 

The yard is always mowed, but the bushes tend to be strangely overgrown and the house really needs a new coat of paint on its shutters. The sidewalk to the door from the main drive is cracked and old, as well.A bicycle seems to be taking up permanent residence on the outside of the porch rail, rusting and tires half-buried in the mud. 

It looks a little like your bike, actually. The logo is in the same place and you think it used to be black before the paint started coming off. 

Whatever man. 

Once you think you saw some kind of hand retracting from the curtain next to the door.

What… w-whatever, man.

Today you drop the shit off, taking the reusable cold bag that was left there for you for next week, and your hard cash that will immediately go into the rent jar. You run your bike the last few steps out of the gate.

You always run the last few steps out of the gate.

Sometimes it feels like you won’t get out of the yard if you don’t. 

Besides your Tuesday delivery, you have an essentially normal time in college. 

On Wednesday, you sit down with John to eat lunch. Both of you have the same class at two and end up eating together before that. You usually have your headphones halfway on your ears and drum your fork and knife on the edge of your Suddenly! Pasta Salad while John blabs about his great-ass fucking day in your right ear canal. 

You two have a symbiotic relationship. You love him a lot, he’s your best bro. It’s a disease.

Usually you ignore him and hum at all the right moments, but today you hear him mention the house at the end of Jones. 

“What?”

John stops talking when you speak, surprised, and perks up, excited. 

“That huge creepy house at the end of Jones Street, with the tall brick walls and the gate you can’t see through!”

“What about it, bro?”

“Don’t you deliver in that neighborhood?”

“Yeah man.”

“Well!” John pauses, seemingly for dramatic effect. He gets all conspiratorial and close to you, and you lean back a little bit. “Okay, so. I hear from my TA Nepeta, who heard from her friend Equius – “

“Your friends all have such weird names, man.”

“-who heard from his friend Vriska, that some guy lives there! And he used to come here!”

“I mean that’s not that surprising, John, this is a college town.”

“Yeah but listen! Dave listen, are you listening?”

“Yes, you overgrown beaver.”

“He supposedly came to school one day like four years ago and killed one of his friends! A since then he never leaves his house!”

“I really doubt he did that, or he’d be in jail.”

John seems instantly disheartened. “Ah, whatever, Dave!” John sighs, put-upon and slaps his cafeteria-issued cup onto the bad veneer table surface. A little milk sloshes out. “You’re no fun.”

You don’t put much stock into the story, but think back to the old house more than twice again that day. 

One of your professors has a grad student substitute for them for a day. The substitute has an eyepatch, and a prosthetic arm. She introduces herself as Vriska Serket.

Okay. 

Six days later, you look extra hard at that rusted old bike. It really is the same kind you have. Right down to the shitty logo on the crossbar. Your bike is what? Four years old? Five?

A sound comes from deep inside the house, some kind of growling moan. As if you were just by the mouth of a cavern, and a rockslide occurred within at some distance. It sounds like a warning. The sound is so sad.

You skip-run the last few feet out of the yard again. But you watch the gate close.

Through the only crack in the gate, a small little slip of light, you watch the front door. A shadowed hand with almost crooked-looking long fingers reaches out. You look away very quickly, and bike home.

A month of deliveries after your conversation with John, you’ve almost forgotten about it.

After a long conversation with someone in one of your classes about how hard it was getting for them to live comfortably or pay rent at all, you feel like leaving a thank you note for the person at the end of Jones. You write it on the receipt Meenah orders you to leave, and stick it halfway inside the lip of the egg carton. 

Next time you’re picking up your envelope from under the rock a week later, you find a letter paper clipped to the outside. You unfold it, and it’s written on a shopping list in all caps, clumsily penned. There is a scratch mark through one of the corners. You figure he must own a cat.

You decide to read the note there, on the porch. You have to take off your omnipresent sunglasses to see it better in the shade of the roof. It doesn’t matter since there’s no one around. 

“IT IS NO PROBLEM. I WAS ONCE A STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY WHOSE HOODIE I ONCE SAW YOU WEARING. TUITION IS ENTIRELY TOO FUCKING HIGH, I KNOW, AND I HAVE ENTIRELY TOO MUCH FUCKING MONEY TO SPEND ON JUST MYSELF. YOU DO A GOOD JOB. -KV”

The next day at lunch John is telling a very long-winded story about the type of crickets he has to buy for his large leopard gecko, Casey, when you interrupt him.

You didn’t wear your headphones to lunch today because you forgot them. John stops talking.

“He did used to come here.”

John is confused and asks ‘who’ through about three spoonfuls of mashed potatoes.

“The guy who lives in the house at the end of Jones.”

John has to put down his fork when he almost chokes on his food. 

“How do you know?!?!” A bit of potato lands on the table next to your hand.

“He’s one of my deliveries. Told me.” You’re a little disgusted at John.

“No way!”

“He left me a note when I made the drop off yesterday.”

“That’s so cool!” John is obviously gone off into fantasy land in his head, now, so you let the conversation peter out on your end. John doesn’t need to know about the initials, so you don’t tell him.

You both go to your 2 PM lab, and the initials you were left are stuck on your mind. 

It would be kind of nosy and rude to just look them up, not to mention a little against company policy, so you don’t.

Next time you deliver groceries, you pick up the envelope and immediately check inside, hoping for another note.

You’re not disappointed.

“I APOLOGIZE FOR THE MESS ON THE PORCH THIS MONTH; THE TREES ARE FUCKING HUGE AND I ONLY HAVE SO MUCH TIME TO CLEAN THE ENDLESS ONSLAUGHT OF NATURE VOMIT.”

Looking around, you can see that there is, actually, a large amount of leaves.

You glance back at the note to read the tail end.

“THANK YOU FOR YOUR TOLERANCE AND EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE. –KV”

You pull out your checkbook pen and scrawl something on the back of the receipt again. 

“its okay man dont worry bout it. in fact do you need someone to help clean them up. i can do that if you want and its more than even with how much you tip me so ill do it for free. i dont have anywhere to be for hours after delivering here”

The note gets tucked into the eggs again, you do a jaunty jump off the porch steps, and make your way out.

You don’t run those last few steps anymore.

Next Tuesday, you leave your bike leaning by the rusted one, and carry the bags up the stairs. There are several different rakes waiting for you there, and a box of the large black trash bags you brought up last time. You decide to read the note first.

He obviously suspected you would, because he wrote about the raking. 

“THANK YOU FOR THE OFFER. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON IT, THERE ARE RAKES AND BAGS. I INSIST ON COMPENSATION. NOT AN OPTION. PLEASE LEAVE THE BAGS JUST INSIDE THE GATE, NEXT TO THE TRASH.”

So, what do you do but rake the leaves. 

Somewhere around half an hour into your raking, you have your headphones in and are bobbing your heat to the beat while you rake. You hear the distant sound of a door opening and slamming closed, and when you glance back, the groceries are gone. You shiver, and notice that they were replaced by a very fluffy scarf and a tall glass of lemonade. 

You grin. You walk over and equip the scarf, and drink the lemonade. 

You don’t know what to do with the scarf when you’re done with the leaves, so you wear it home. It smells like cloves and citrus.

Next Tuesday, the same items are waiting for you, with a request, ‘IF YOU ARE ABLE AND WILLING’ to do the sides of the house as well.

The next Tuesday it’s the rear, and there is a note waiting for you that says to ‘ONLY RAKE UP TO THE TREE LINE. MY PROPERTY IS RATHER LARGE TO THE REAR.’

There are some VERY nice and obvious jokes to make about that, and you snort and suppress the urge to shout innuendo at the closed front doors. You’re glad you brought gloves this time, because it’s getting colder out at night. 

At some point toward the later evening, a tinny bell rings from the direction of the house. 

There’s a gloved hand beckoning you over from behind the darkened doorway.

It might be against your better judgement, which is screaming at you in the back of your head not to go too close, but you proceed to do as the hand asks, and get nearer.

You think you see the glint of some very shiny eyes, like dog’s eyes reflecting the light from a flash camera, on the other side of the screen. When you look skeptical about getting closer, the hand retracts, leaving a tray on the top step of the wraparound porch. You lean the rake on the banister, and lean down to take the tray in your hands.

Hot soup in a large thermos, and a piece of some kind of cake you’re never seen before. With two halves of a hot sandwich.

You murmur your thanks at the now-closed door, and sit on the step to eat. 

You finish raking the leaves that night.

The next Tuesday, there’s a note with a request for you to come that weekend. 

“I WONDER IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO CLEAN MY GUTTERS FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS THIS WEEKEND. YOU ARE PHYSICALLY CAPABLE AND I WILL COMPENSATE VERY WELL FOR YOUR TIME. YOUR HEIGHT ALSO HELPS WITH YOUR CREDIBILITY AS WHAT I’M SURE IS AN EXPERT GUTTER CLEANER.”

When you see that –KV at the end, any internal bickering about your answer resolves for you. You smile at the sass in the note and leave an affirmative reply. Winter break is starting this weekend.

It’s much colder than it was when you arrive four days later. A note waits for you with confirmation that the shed is unlocked, and everything you should need should be in there. 

The shed is huge inside, and has way more than you could need for this.

Pulling your hat tighter over your ears, you blow into your hands before tightening your gloves and hoisting the largest of the three available ladders over one shoulder. You’ll start with the second floor roof and work down. You’ve never been afraid of heights with all the rooftop strifes with your bro.

The bell rings twice with hot basic meals for you, and you happily eat them in the cover the porch provides from the wind. You really hope you aren’t forming some kind of pavlovian response to that bell. 

On the second day, you wear the scarf to clean because even though it’ll get a little in the way, it’s warmer than not wearing it. 

You’re almost done with the gutters on the outside edge of the lower roof, when the bell rings from the porch. 

You miss your hand hold on the gutter while you’re reaching for something just slightly out of reach. 

Before you can blink, you’re falling fifteen feet straight to the ground.

The only thought that goes through your head is that bro will be epic mad at you for not obeying his rules of basic ladder safety, like a damn fool. 

Everything jolts, kind of, when you hit grass, and it’s kind of blurry and stupid looking out of your own eyes. Your head hurts. 

Air coughs out of your lungs in a steamy puff.

Everything hurts, actually. You try to sit up and get dizzy. Your breath is gone. Stupid Dave, stupid Dave.

Putting pressure on your wrist makes you cry out in pain. 

Is your shoulder dislocated?

A face is hovering over yours, now, which is kind of weird? You must be dead or hallucinating because this face is gray as the slate winter sky, and centered in sharp teeth and yellow eyes. It’s rimmed with wild black messiness that wavers in your vision. 

It’s very human despite everything, and you reach up to touch the right cheek. 

“Huh, not clouds.” You whisper for some reason, and you can feel yourself smiling. “So pretty though.”

“Oh fuck, Strider, do you seriously have a goddamn concussion.”

“No hospital. Bro says hospitals are where people go? To die,” you croak intelligently.

“Ugh, fuck you and your stupidity, Strider.”

How does he even know your name anyway? Weird.

Something is picking you up. Points dig into your side as you’re carried up the porch and inside the house. Your head is pillowed on soft in front of something else that’s very warm and you whisper apologies to your brother into the soft something before the warm something gets a little dimmer and the gray something slaps a hand to your chest to scare the breath back into your lungs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter out, third coming soon-ish, I hope everyone is having a good day and week and so on. :P


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dave wakes up

Dave, wake up. Fucking idiot.

“What the fuck?”

It feels like there’s cotton in your mouth and your teeth have mittens over them.

Hands are shaking you awake and shining a light into your eyes. The light feels like it’s peeling back your retinas, it hurts so much. You groan. Your eyes weren’t meant for this kind of abuse, that’s kind of why you wear your fucking stupid sunglasses all the time.

The light goes away and you immediately blink, and try to sit up. Pain rockets through your side and a loud noise comes out of your throat before you spasm and flop back down. 

Someone is fussing over you the next minute, helping you shift and wiping some sweat off of your brow with a gentle hand. They roll the blankets to fit you comfortably with no small amount of hurting involved, you guess as a kind of reprimand.

“Don’t move, you fucking idiot. No concussion, thankfully but you landed on your wrist wrong and broke it,” a harsh voice says somewhere above your head.

“You also landed on one of the rakes and you have two badly bruised ribs.”

Sitting up a little bit more isn’t easy, but you manage to search for the owner of the growly, deep voice and see a figure hunched in front of the fire. 

You really hope you’re hallucinating the horns, but for some reason you doubt that you are. 

“Who the fuck are you?”

“The owner of this house, asswipe.” His voice sounds like he’s not used to talking, and like he hasn’t said a solid word in years. He’s also talking around his teeth, you can hear, and you watch him chew his lip nervously with one of them that sticks out a little further than the rest. 

“KV?”

“Karkat Vantas, at your service. Call me Karkat.”

“Hmmm, at my service?”

“Not like that, dickmunch.”

“Dave Strider. Call me Dave.”

“I already know your name,” he murmurs, looking at the fire. His hands are clenching the rag as he wrings it into a bowl. He doesn’t look at you, but the fire casts a nice glow on his face. It’s night time now, you can see. The company must have told him your name.

“How did you know I have bruised ribs?”

“I was a med student for a while before changing to lit. They’re not too bad, could be worse.”

“That’s cool.”

You lift up your left wrist, see it bandaged. It’s done really well, you can tell with your extensive first aid knowledge. You and bro were really into parkour for a while. You move the blanket on your chest and see the wrappings there, too. Also well done. This guy knows his shit.

Karkat moves closer, tentatively now that you’re conscious you guess. It must be either the sleepiness or the pain but you don’t question his gray skin. He hands you a couple of extra strength ibuprofen and a glass of water. 

He still doesn’t look at you as he says, “You shouldn’t be moved for at least a week so that the ribs can heal a bit more, and then you should take at least another week to fully heal if you actually have any sense.” 

The guy can probably feel you staring at the side of his head, but he still doesn’t look at you. It’s getting a little frustrating. 

Probably because you tended to have the same problem with your elementary school teachers not wanting to look into your eyes. 

“You said no hospital, so I’m assuming you’ll be fine with staying here.” 

“Hey,” you say firmly, trying to get his attention.

“You should get a friend to bring you some extra clothes and your computer or something so I don’t have to entertain you forever.”

“Hey! Look the fuck at my eyes when you talk to me.” You say more curtly, and he finally looks at you.

The guy doesn’t speak, though, and you narrow your eyes at him as you relax back into the pillow. He eyes your tensed shoulders. You force them to relax. 

“You sound really prepared for telling me this whole speech.”

Karkat freezes up again at the suspicion, and hunches his shoulders. His chin drops and in that moment he reminds you of a cowed dog that doesn’t really know what they’re getting yelled at for, but they figure that since the pillow is torn up and sitting right there, they’re in trouble.

“Did you plan this, then?” You tack on.

Except then Karkat says, “Fuck no. I had a lot of time to think while you were passed out. I’m rusty at conversations, so fucking SUE ME if I practiced and figured out what to say beforehand.”

You two get into a staring match, red eyes locking with redder eyes as the light of the fire glints over the edge of the grate and spills onto your faces. A log pops in the hearth, and you let up, letting your eyes fall onto the flames in the quiet of the night in the house. 

“This is all very convenient,” you try again. Some part of you wants to weed out the psycho killer that lurks inside of him that John told you about. Even though you didn’t believe John and you still don’t.

“It is very much NOT convenient, how in the world is it convenient for my grocery runner to fall off my roof while cleaning my gutters? If you decide to sue, it’ll be a huge liability issue since you weren’t even contracted.”

“Grocery runner and expert gutter cleaner,” you add helpfully.

“Don’t push your luck, dweeb.”

Karkat reaches out and settles an impossibly large ice pack on your chest wrappings. He sets it in place by leaning a pillow over it. His hands have pointed claws on them. Sharp.

For some reason you trust him enough to not hurt you in any way here, though. If he had wanted to do something to you, he would have already had ample time, right? You are vulnerable, covered in bandages and scratches from the holly bushes you trimmed for him. 

Karkat lays the cooler cloth across your forehead. It feels amazing. The backs of his too-sharp nails run across your forehead as he carefully draws away. He seems a little afraid to touch you with them. The corner of the bedsheet closest to your face has a tear in it. The first note he left you had a tear in it. 

“I didn’t believe them when they said you killed your friend.” Why did you say that?

Karkat goes very hard, very still. His teeth bare but it looks like fear, not anger. He breathes a little, in out, in out, in out, whistling through the jagged fangs. Why do you always push your limits? Calming down seems to be the agenda. Karkat seems to collect himself, to your surprise, and you relax back into the pillows under you.

“They say that I did that? I’ve been in here for years, now.” Somehow his tone is even, and you’re impressed. “He’s not dead last time I checked.”

You kinda want to see him mad, with how that last word was punctuated with a snarl. You figure now is not the time. 

It’s quiet for a long time in the room. Not even one of the logs shifting can interrupt it. Karkat seems to get a joy out of tending the flames and does so with a practiced ease. You start drifting into sleep. Pain makes you tired.

“Fuck it, sure, I’ll stay put.”

“I wasn’t seriously giving you an option. Here or the hospital.”

“Bring me my phone so I can text John.”

Karkat brings you your phone, without questioning who John is, and dumps your messenger bag onto the edge of the large side table. The phone drops painfully onto your chest and you hiss. 

“Text your fucking friend.”

“Fine,” you reply, as you’re unlocking your phone. 

John’s already texted you quite a few times, as well as Jade once and Rose twice.

If you text John, you know he’ll text the girls, and everyone else will pretty much leave you alone. The pain is making you really tired, so that seems like the best option. Great.

**Dave: yo john can you bring that packed duffle bag and my backpack to the house at this address and leave it on the porch dude thanks owe you one**

_John: what the fuck? yeah okay, i guess i can do that. :B_

**Dave: gate code is 527528 have a blast**

While John is bringing you some effects, you look around the room. Let’s start with the window. The curtains are dusty, but the glass pane is pristine as shit aside from a couple of cobwebs. Speaking of cobwebs, there seems to be one in every available corner and ceiling mould in the room, and then some on the four-poster you’re laying on. 

You wonder for a second why there doesn’t seem to be any on the hearth or the doors and a few pieces of furniture. Then you see Karkat watching you look around. You also see him carefully and slowly pull a dusty, dirty rag behind him, out of your sight. 

Lol.

So you look away from his nervous rag-hiding, and examine the rest of the room. Lots of old furniture, practically covered in the stench of luxury. Half of it looks reupholstered in the last ten years. You’re not sure how you know that. There’s also an old painting above the hearth. A young woman. Who even gets professional oil paintings done anymore?

Fucking rich people. 

Karkat almost goes straight through the ceiling when your phone rings. 

“Dave, what the fuck?! This is the creepy house!” You see Karkat’s large pointed ears twitch, and see him wince, as if he could hear John on the other end. 

“Yeah, I know, just leave the stuff.”

“This is weird, Dave. How do I know you’re not being held hostage!”

Never were you happier for the code you and John had invented as children. 

“Yeah well the canary’s in the birdcage, so I guess you’ll just have to deal with it.”

“What?” Apparently it was the code John didn’t remember. Great. 

Funnily enough he seems to come to his senses, and makes this “ahhh” sound of recognition. 

“It’s all fine bro let’s chill out, okay? That guy I was cleaning the leaves up for is really cool and is taking care of me and shit. Felt bad cause I fell off his roof.”

“YOU WHAT?!” You can hear the scream from inside the house, and laugh. Karkat looks terrified and guilty. 

“I’m fine, man, he used to be a med student. So I wanted you to bring me my stuff.”

“You should be at the hospital!” He exclaims. 

“You know I can’t afford that, man. I’m fine, don’t worry.”

There’s a long few minutes of silence as John very obviously thinks it out, and breathes to calm himself down. 

He speaks again. “How do I know it’s really you then? I don’t just want to leave your bag here.”

“Wanna facetime me?”

“Yeah.” He’s solid on this. You hold your phone up in front of you, and accept the call. 

John, on the other end, sighs when he sees your face. He’s definitely on the porch, you can see. He looks a little shaken up about being here, which makes sense seeing as he’s heard so many shitty stories. Egbert and his stories. 

“Look, see? It’s me, dorkbert. Now leave my duffle and backpack next to the door and Kar…” you look at him. He seems kind of confused as to why you stopped talking. 

Is it okay to give away his name? You know that with a little hard research it would become obvious. The guy seems to realize your dilemma and gives you a nod. 

“… kat. Karkat will come out and get it once you’re gone.”

“Why can’t he meet me face to face?”

“He’s shy, dude. Don’t judge a man for being shy.”

Egbert finally relents. “Okay, fine, fine. Just call me first sign he’s a creep or something, howboutit.”

“Thanks, John.”

“No prob Dave.” With that, he hangs up.

Karkat must hear something, because his ears twitch after five minutes and he heads out of the room. 

While he’s gone, you text Bro. You’d been planning to visit him in a couple days, hence the packed bag.

**Dave: something came up so my trip needs rescheduling of the most epic kind**  
_Bro: Okay little man. Christmas?_  
**Dave: ill letcha know**  
**Dave: probably**

Karkat comes back, and sets the bag almost gently next to the bed. The backpack, which he must realize is just a fancy computer carrier, he puts down next to you on the bed, while trying not to jostle you. His yellowy teeth flash in the light as he leaves, muttering something about adjusting the thermostat because shit, it’s hot in this room. 

By the time Karkat gets back, you already have your computer out, and you’re tapping on the handrest impatiently. You still need his wifi password. You’re honestly surprised he has wifi. You’re not sure why, but with all the antiquity and the old panels on the outside of the house, you expected he wouldn’t have electricity or something, let alone wireless internet or a fucking thermostat. 

Of course the ceiling fan he flicks on when he re-enters the room immediately makes you feel stupid. He flicks a wrinkled piece of paper at you, and it lands, folded, on your chest. He’s turned away from you, but his shoulders are hunched with focus.

The paper is dry and a little worn in your fingers when you pick it up. The rasp of it against one of your nails sends a shivery tingling down your spine. Karkat is muttering to himself in his gravel-and-tin-cans voice and shifting one of the logs in the hearth again. It must have gotten really cold outside earlier if he’s doing so much with the fire. Then again, it is cheaper to have a fire going than heat the whole house. 

Whatever the reason, you’re glad for the heat. 

Karkat’s fairly lean arms stick out of the rolled-up sleeves of his black turtleneck and you wonder if he works out. Maybe one of the rooms in this house has exercise equipment in it? 

A ding from your phone says Dirk has texted you back. 

You pick it up, type out some kind of unimportant affirmative to being able to visit for Christmas, you’ll probably have to drive down the day of Christmas Eve. You put it down. You type in the wifi password. It doesn’t connect. You groan.

“What?!” Karkat growls at you. More shivers down your spine. He doesn’t look up, and you can see that when he brought in the wifi password, he also brought in a pile of books and has spread them out on a low coffee table on the other side of the fire from you. His feet are also clawed, you notice, as he stretches them out toward the heat. He seems at home on the floor.

“The password isn’t working, man.”

A long-suffering sigh, and you can almost feel the eyeroll as he stands. You wonder how his feet aren’t cold on the floor. The claws make you look away. Karkat seems to forget his earlier shyness as he leans close to your head. 

His breath smells like fresh mint, which was unexpected. What did you expect it to smell like? Ungodly rotting flesh? Weird. His slate skin is soft-looking, like yours. He has some fine hairs on his chin, but obviously whatever he is doesn’t grow beards. No stubble. 

“You missed a zero,” he is explaining as you stare at his face from the side. His profile is goat-like, you can see. A classical Greek nose, heavy black eyebrows. Tongue as red as blood, fangs yellowed, but not for lack of care. They seem healthy in that color. Jagged teeth close shut sharply as you stare into his mouth. 

He seem embarrassed when you meet his eyes through his mop of black hair. 

The eyes instill a need to run in you. An urge to escape, those foreign yellow eyes with that ring of bright candy red around the slitted pupil. With their deep bags and curved lashes. You’ve always had a thing for danger.

You both inhale deeply at the same time. While you smell the bar soap he uses to wash his neck and graphite, he obviously smells something else. Can he seriously fucking smell fear? He backs away, remembering himself, and his shame. Forms curl in on themselves with the coil of his shoulders. A thread in his neck goes very taut. 

“Please don’t fear me, Strider, if you can manage it,” he says, and gets something like resignation in his thousand-yard stare. 

He looks away, you look away, and you’re looking back to the computer to find the missing digit in the wifi password. Papers shuffle from the direction of the table for the next fifteen minutes, and you hear the clear scrawl of a pencil on paper. 

“Why do you look so fucking weird?”

_Shit._

Biggest idiot ever: Dave Strider. 

It’s the most obvious change in a person you’ve seen since he tensed next to you earlier. Not that impressive time frame, yeah, but it works as a comparison for you right now.

Claws rake on the edge of the table with a crispy crunching noise, and he almost visibly turns to the emotional equivalent of stone. 

He snarls, then. A new sound. A dominant sound, if your shitty biology course in your freshman year taught you anything. A sound meant to expel intruders, or frighten competition, or warn of claimed territory. 

“It’s just the way it fucking is, you insufferable and nosy piece of feces.”

 _Informative._

You’re in no place to sass, you were the asshole who provoked this response.

Karkat stands up, and grabs what looks like a phone with a very durable protective case on it. 

“I have to go talk to your delivery company about getting someone to substitute for you next week.”

Oh fuck, that.

“I’m gonna get fucking fired.” It was only one week, so maybe Meenah would be cool? You had asked for one of your weeks off soon anyway, so that you could visit Bro for Christmas. To explain the timetable in case anyone is lost (calendars are very important to you), you had finished finals by the second weekend in December. That was the twelfth, the weekend that Karkat wanted you to clean his gutters.

Judging by the date and time on your phone, it was now 1 AM on Monday. A week in bed gave you until the twenty-first for bed rest. Your boss gives everyone three days off around Christmas as a policy of hers, so that was fine, but you still had a week where you couldn’t deliver. 

You’re starting to frown more and more, and you hear a pencil snap from Karkat’s direction. He’s looking down when you meet his eyes. 

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” he mutters, obviously trying not to growl with the way he’s measuring his words. 

Karkat leaves the room, slamming the door behind him. It cracks back open with the force. 

How the fuck would he have any influence?

You sit for maybe five minutes, a little stunned, before you decide to do some research.

Something pink glowing in the hallway catches your eye, and you see the color barely reflecting off of a picture frame. 

…okay then.

The internet is open, and you check down the hallway again, ignoring that pink glow, before typing Karkat’s full name into the browser.

A load of stuff comes up about a tragic car crash involving a Mrs. Dolorosa and Mr. Ahsan Vantas, and a few relatives who had been in the car with them. That seems a little personal and deep and painful for you to know, so you ignore it. Instead you scroll down to an article about a family that made a great deal of money off of some kind of mining operation back in the 1930’s. The mine apparently made them wicked bank, and kept on producing. 

The article is about their son selling the mine officially to an old trusted family friend, some guy named Ampora, for more hella bank after his remaining non-estranged family died. He apparently has been living off of the funds from that sale, as well as the family fortune and the insurance money from the crash, since. 

It has no picture of him. With a little extra searching you do not find any pictures of their son or anyone who resembles the guy whose house you’re staying in, or anything regarding weird horns and skin and eyes. Not even a facebook page. 

You briefly wonder if he hired someone to expunge any visible evidence of him from the internet, or at least make it unsearchable. 

You do find a student registry account for him on your University website, and another for an online school where he seems to be completing his degree in something. 

Karkat comes back into the room with a satisfied look on his face. “You are not getting fired.”

You’re very surprised now, and try to look subtle as you clear your search history completely and open a new tab. 

“Thank you,” you try to say honestly, to even manage sincerity, and he smirks before looking satisfied.

It almost seems like he’s forgotten about earlier. 

When he sits down, though, he still sits a little farther from you, and doesn’t really look at you much. 

You spend time making some more of your shitty comics that you’ve been pretty much ignoring for a couple years. The broken wrist and laptop touchpad make for some TERRIBLE renderings. It’s fucking excellent. Rad as can be.

Karkat doesn’t seem to forgive you for a couple days. 

Despite that, he spends a lot of time in the room with you, still helps you to the bathroom and brings you food in bed. You spend a lot of time napping (because being injured and bedridden makes you hella tired for some reason), and you notice he’s always there. He works on math a good amount of the time for a couple of days, and it makes you wonder if he’s going back to med school. He also writes, though, and types. 

Spending time with you seems like an amazing pastime if you do say so yourself, but a part of you still wonders why he’s there. You had expected to be alone when he said that he didn’t want to entertain you. 

A big part of you wants to draw his weird profile. 

You spend a lot of spare moments staring at him, at his foreign and alien features. 

“Why do you hang out in here all the time?” You ask him on the third day, as you wait for an episode of an anime to load that you wanted to catch up on. 

“It’s too much of a goddamn hassle tending two separate fires,” he asserts bravely. It sounds rehearsed.

You suspect he’s just lonely.

You also discover that Karkat loves to listen to punk rock and “I hate my dad” music like Say Anything and Green Day while he studies or does math problems. 

There is one point where he’s out of the room for a long time, though. 

You’re usually asleep at that time, but your sleeping schedule is a little unpredictable, so you’re up a couple of nights in the week at the hours of midnight and four in the morning. Karkat is not there, and the fire is dying. 

You crane your neck toward the window, and see snow in the pane. 

The last night of the week of your bedrest, you’ve been allowed to get up and move around in the mansion by Karkat that day. You are locked out of one area of the house, you can see, and you haven’t noticed the pink glow since a couple of days ago.

Whatever. Knowing Karkat, it’s a neon sign proclaiming something stupid with a bad literary pun.

It’s five in the morning, Karkat hasn’t returned yet, and you hear a mournful howl from outside. It surprises you because what the fuck? Wolves are supposed to be extinct, right? 

But wolves are cool as shit, so you get up (only a little twinge in your side) and shuffle your cold ass over to the frosty window. The unseasonable snow is pattering to the ground outside. A figure stands near the gazebo, next to the mulberry tree. It’s hard to see with all the white, but it has to be Karkat. Right?

His face is pointed upwards, mouth open, and feet bare as far as you can tell with the depth of the fluff on the ground. The howl comes again, and you know it’s coming from him. Arms outstretched as if to catch the very moon, he falls to his knees.

If a creature cries out in the night and no one answers him, what does that mean?

You go back to lay down. You hug a pillow with your broken wrist. A howl, again. 

It’s so lonely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's looking to be shorter than I thought but then it was just something to pass more time! I'm thinking two or three more chapters :) thank you kindly for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Okay, fine. You had to get away and you don’t know why. You also don’t know why you’re inexplicably drawn back to that house. It feels difficult to leave even when you go to drop off groceries. He hasn’t left you a note since you left that one time, though occasionally you leave him one. Just a greeting."

It’s been a few weeks since you stayed at Karkat’s. Your winter break is over, now.

Right after he deemed you okay in recovery, you grabbed your shit and high-tailed it out of there. It wasn’t fear or cabin fever, really. You had to get to your trip to Bro’s, and he lives all the way in Texas. 

Seriously, stop asking? It’s pissing you off a little. 

Okay, fine. You had to get away and you don’t know why. You also don’t know why you’re inexplicably drawn back to that house. It feels difficult to leave even when you go to drop off groceries. He hasn’t left you a note since you left that one time, though occasionally you leave him one. Just a greeting.

It makes sense, you guess, that he still wouldn’t show his face to you outside even though you know him more personally.   
It’s back to lunchtime with John. By some miracle you both ended up having the same class hours around lunchtime again, and you regularly meet up in the Union to eat together. 

Did Karkat eat with his friends when he came to school? 

John is off on a tirade and you’re gently fellating your applesauce (because you forgot a spoon) when none other than Eridan fucking Ampora sits down in front of you. 

John says hello, but you ignore him. Eridan doesn’t acknowledge John and coughs, loudly. You still ignore him. It takes a good deal of concentration to get that little bit of applesauce at the bottom of the cup. 

He coughs again, pointedly. 

This is getting annoying, and you’re just trying to eat your applesauce. You spare him a glare, shift your sunglasses so he’ll know you’re paying attention. 

He looks fucking _overjoyed_. “I went by your apartment ta get my books. The ones I left there last semester?”

You make a noise of understanding, shift your attention back to food. 

“You were leavin’. Path seemed familiar and I was bored, so I followed you. Right ta the big creepy house,” Eridan continues. He’s checking out his nails, has his legs crossed. How does his girlfriend fucking tolerate this fake-aloof crap. 

“That’s great, dude. Great. Please never do it again.” You try to start ignoring him again, and continue fucking going _down_ on your pulverized apples. 

“My father practically bought his life, ya know. Vantas.”

 _So that’s where you recognized the name Ampora_.

Eridan keeps talking like he’s saying things that are either worth a lot of value or will FLIP your mind. “I’ve been by his house ta drop off his royalty checks from my father, but I’ve never seen his face. Never been past the secure mailbox in the wall next ta the gate. Father says it’s fine because he gets a polite email every month confirmin’ the delivery and wishin’ him well an’ all that. Y’ know what I think?”

You feel suddenly protective and defensive. 

Eridan leans in closer. “I think he’s probly some kinda freak with skeletons ta hide.”

You snap you hand down onto the table next to his.

“That’s fucking great, Eridan. You done harassing me?”

“Not really. I still need my books,” he confirms. You can hear the curl of his lip in his tone, and the smug victory in the almost sharklike grin he must be sporting. 

John has gone so incredibly still and silent by now, but speaks up. 

“Dave’ll bring your books here to lunch tomorrow, kay?”

“Fantastic,” he replies, and gets up. “Take care, strider.”

It’s later that week and you’ve spent entirely too much time thinking about what Eridan said. You had given John the books to give to the insufferable fucknut, and avoided lunch the next day. He had said that his father “owned Karkat’s life” but that couldn’t possibly be true. Why should you care, anyway?

You guess it might be because he took care of you, maybe you just feel protective because you owe him? He’s such a kind person, though, and you want to sock the purple-haired asshole right in his moneymaker for implying that Karkat is in any way a freak, or has anything terrible to hide. 

Part of you still thinks Karkat is hiding something big. Obviously his deformities are rather… telling as to why he would hide. It’s not that, though, that you’re stuck on. But he’s so kind, what else could he possibly have to hide from you. That little bit that doubts Karkat reacted with defensive fear when Eridan got up in your face. It didn’t feel good. 

Anyways, it’s Thursday, now, and you’re standing in front of Karkat’s door. Your bike is leant where it was for that whole week, and your thumb is hovering in front of the doorbell. 

You can’t press it. A curtain shifts to your left, though, and it makes you jump. The inner door opens, and you can make out his hand in the receding darkness. 

“What do you want? I already saved you your fucking job.”

You wince at the sharp tone and words. 

“What, no tea first?” You ask. Only thing that came to mind.

Karkat comes forward into the light a tiny bit, and the look on his face is the most classic mix of confused, surprised and suspicious. It’s a long three minutes standing there in silence, him with his hand posed on the edge of the door like he’ll slam it shut at any time. 

He eventually sighs, resigned, and backs off enough to open the doorway for you to walk through. 

You walk in, though, and into the kitchen. He already had tea on, and pours you a cup. Gestures for you to sit at the broad counter. 

“So, Dave, what do you want?” He remains standing. 

You say the first thing that comes to mind. You’re looking around at the dusty house, and can smell the must. 

“Let me move in here and be your housekeeper.”

“What?”

“Your house is dirty as fuck, man, you could use a cleaning lady but you obviously don’t want anyone seeing your face. Besides, it’s like some kind of wild animal lives in here.”

Before you know what’s up, there’s a solid beat of silence and he’s almost on top of you. One hand on the short back of the barstool, and one on the counter next to your teacup. You’re not really trapped, but he makes you feel like you’re backed into a wall. 

It’s kinda hot. 

“I’m not an animal,” he growls, sub-vocal. 

It’s really hot.

His claws scrape a little and nudge your teacup. His hot breath fans your face, with a ginseng tint to the usual mint smell. He’s so close. 

Unfortunately, when he rushed you, you flinched pretty hard and your sunglasses got knocked a little askew. He’s looking at your bare eyes, and it feels too intense. You have to reach up to adjust the frames on your nose. 

When you move, Karkat seems to burst from his trance, and backs off a bit. He looks embarrassed to have acted on that instinct. He looks around, you figure he glances over the state of his house, and frowns. 

“If you let me pay the remainder of your tuition as payback for your ribs, I will let you do that.”

“Deal. Really beats the delivery job. I’ll only have to get your groceries, now.”

You leave, then, and the following weekend you show up with all of your belongings in a few boxes and bags in John’s truck. It was a furnished apartment, so you don’t have too much to worry about. 

“Where is he? I wanna get a good look at the guy who’ll be rooming with my best friend.”

John looks about ready to shit his pants, and it makes you want to laugh. Jesus, was he still clinging to that idea that Karkat was some kind of serial killer?

“He doesn’t really like his face, so he hides a lot,” you explain, putting a large box down in the foyer. 

“Why not?” John asks. Fair question, honestly. 

You have to think about your question carefully. You know Karkat is hiding behind a hallway or door somewhere, listening and watching. Not to mention his crazy good hearing. 

“Absolutely brutal about of zits and scars, bro. Think Phantom of the Opera type shit. Crazy.”

“Ew.”

“Tell me about it,” you sigh, feigning exhaustion at the mere idea you’d have to even share the space with a person with an ugly face. Thank gog john bought it. 

You set down the last of the boxes, and John throws your second largest duffel down on the floor. 

“Thanks for helping me out, man,” you say, and reach around to clap John on the back.

He ends up going for the full hug, anyway, because he’s John.

“Let’s hang out soon, at my place. You owe me a Mario Party smackdown,” he says, and flicks your nose.

“Yeah man, I know. Now get out.”

“Bye Dave!”

“Bye.”

As soon as the door is shut, your eyes flicker around. There he is. You pull open a door, and sure enough, Karkat is behind it. He winces visibly and looks guilty for snooping. 

“Help me carry all this shit upstairs to that room I was in before,” you command, even though he’s technically your boss. 

Karkat dutifully walks around you and grabs three boxes in his arms. Three boxes you know weren’t lightweight. God.

“Why haven’t you told…. Him about me?” Karkat says quietly once the two of you are heading back down for a second trip.

“It’s not my secret to tell,” you answer easily and honestly. 

“Oh.” He’s stopped himself on the landing between the second and first floors, and is giving you a very confused look.

“Yeah. Now put yourself back to work dude. I gotta unpack these by tomorrow so I can start cleaning your man-cave sty.” 

It doesn’t take you more than three hours to unpack fully, actually, seeing as a good deal of the things you brought were clothes and books. Rose got you into books a few years ago, and it was a very heavy and growing collection. Interestingly enough, the cabinets and shelves in the room you had been in last time had been cleared. The closet was nice and streamlined on the inside, with a lot of empty hangers. The mix of antiquated and modern in this house would take more getting used to. 

Among the other things you had in that apartment were things for school, some smaller stuff for making music (your turntables were at Bro’s indefinitely), some of your dead things in jars, and just a bunch of other random shit for living.

After you finish unpacking and generally getting settled in, you go downstairs to grab some grub. Karkat is sitting at the kitchen table next to an open window, working on what you still assume is homework. Bent over his work, back to you, not paying you any attention except for a hand wave. 

It’s funny, he never liked sitting in front of open windows, or in the sunlight at all, before.

Whatever, man.

You open the freezer, already listing in your head what Karkat usually had on his grocery order. You should find some…. Jackpot. There are some frozen microwave burritos in there, beef and bean flavor. You grab the sour cream out of the fridge before closing both doors. 

Except… you see something in the back. Setting your spoils down on the counter behind you, you try to get a better look. It’s a… block-shaped thing. You touch a ceramic plate that’s ice-cold to the skin, covered in plastic wrap. 

Pulling it out is easy, it seems to be placed in a location that won’t allow it to be disturbed. It turns out to be…

Cake? 

It’s the same kind Karkat had made for you way back when you’d been on the first day of the gutters. It’s perfectly preserved, if a little freezer-burnt, and you wonder just how long it’s been there. 

“Huh. Weird.”

When you put it back, and close the freezer door, it’s to Karkat’s piercing stare from across the room. It spears you with his yellow eyes that seem to glow under the shadow of his brow. More forbidden territory, you guess. 

You put the burritos on a plate and stick them in the microwave. You break that stare. You eat at the counter. 

Karkat is there when you finish cleaning off your dishes, and holds a keyring up in front of your face. It has two nearly-identical keys on it. 

“The one that says ‘H’ on it is the house key. The other is the shed key.”

“When did you have time to get copies made?” You ask shortly after managing to recover from the heart attack he gave you by just appearing there. 

He stares at you flatly for a little while. “I’m sure by now you’ve done your research on my history, and should therefore be aware of multiple extra copies I might have of the keys to my house. The locks have not been changed in fifteen years.”

Oh. He means his parents’ keys. He expected you to do research? Well, now you feel a little less guilty, at least. Or should you?

Karkat rolls his eyes at your confused expression, and starts leading you around to show you where the cleaning supplies are. Most of them are either under the sink in the kitchen, or in the cabinet in the laundry room. Anything else, he claims, will be in the shed. Which you now have a key for. 

On the way out of the fairly decent-sized laundry room (with pretty nice appliances and racks and shit, you note), Karkat turns and shoves a paper into your chest. 

“It seems a little weird, since you’re now my roommate to some degree, but this is a list of house rules.”

Ohhhhh. You read down the list as he recites them.

“Now, you’re a pretty polite and quiet guy, and you seem to have good habits, so these are just my rules,” he begins. “Don’t go into the west section of the second floor, to the right of the stairs. Don’t go into the attic on that side either. These things are blocked off for a reason.”

A little odd, but okay. You nod anyway. Karkat skips about half the list, which is just a list of things to be cleaned once a week in the part of the house that you’ve been assigned. 

“Do not fall off any more ladders. Try not to break anything. If you have questions about anything serious, ask me before you try to solve it alone.”

He waits for you to nod before going on. You’ve skimmed the list, and flipped it over to the back, where there’s a helpful chart of cleaning directions for the old furniture and the rugs. On the rugs it says they only need to be cleaned once a month, which makes you sigh in relief.

“Dinner will be ready at seven every night. Yes, I will cook and clean the kitchen, it’s the least I can do when you are taking care of everything else. Also,” he says, waiting, and you look up at him. “Academics come first, and then your work here. This is part of our unspoken contract.”

He looks pensive for a moment, like he’s considering writing up an actual physical binding order.

“Roger,” you say, and salute him. He snorts. That was cute. 

He looks like he’s about to walk away and leave you to whatever you’re doing, but you have to ask.

“What’s in the west section of the second floor?”

Karkat’s lighter expression disappears, and he hunches over. It makes him look so… beastial. 

“That…” he says, “Is the family wing.”

Oh.

You’re saying that a lot lately. 

Karkat walks away, and you find some homework to do before you hit the hay. You’ll start on the cleaning when you can have windows open for it tomorrow. 

The middle of the night is cold again when you wake up. Your alarm clock next to your bed reads 2:36 AM, and it’s dark in the room except for the light from the moon and a candle that hadn’t been in here before. Something catches your eye in the window; a reflection is there, in the corner.

It’s… it’s a face. A human face. 

You’re still groggy enough from sleep that you don’t move, and don’t feel afraid of it like you probably should. The face is forlorn, drawn. It’s not looking at the reflection, but rather at the back of your turned head. It takes you a minute to figure out just why you aren’t scared of it. It’s familiar, that face. You find yourself recognizing features. 

The nose is less animal, and there are no fangs. The skin is darker than yours, and the jaw is softer than you remember. The wild black hair is the same, though, and the set of the brows and the mouth. 

“Four hours,” that gentle mouth whispers. “Only four, and then it’s back to that.”

_Look at me. Look at me._

The person is sitting next to the bed, auburn irises fixed on the candlelight flickering off the back of your crown. Their clothes look too loose on them, as if they used to be taller. 

“Back to who I really am,” it whispers again. Curls down. Wibbles. 

_Look at me._

Is it…

_Look_

Their eyes start moving up toward the window, slowly. 

_It is. K-_

Everything goes black before your eyes can meet. 

The next day, as promised, you start cleaning the house. It’s Sunday, and you did your homework last night, so you have nothing else to do. 

You start by cleaning all the bathrooms. Bathrooms are easy. You grab the tile scrubbing bubbles and spray shit down, open a window if the bathroom has one, then put on your chemical mask and clean. The bathrooms besides one on the first floor and the one connected to your room are just dusty. (you clean them with chemicals anyway) A couple have a tiny bit of harmless mold in them. Nothing needs to be replaced or anything. That’s good. 

It does strike you as a little weird that there aren’t any mirrors outside of the bathrooms. Usually houses have more mirrors than just the small ones over sinks, right?

One of the mirrors that’s still left is cracked straight down through the middle and then a little splintered.

Mmkay.

You have time left over after cleaning the four bathrooms you are allowed to get to, and decide to bust out the vacuum and take care of the rugs that are big enough to warrant the vacuum. The entire house has wood floors, which makes you feel incredibly grateful and annoyed at the same time. 

It says on the list that you only need to fully mop once every couple months, and the rest of the time it’s as-needed except for using the swiffer once a week. You are also told on the list to take the floor sweep duster to the floors once a week. That’s fine. 

The hard work feels really good, though, and you end up sweating through your t-shirt and stripping it off. You had an undershirt underneath, so it’s all Gucci. 

You also crack open a few windows at the front and back of the house. It’s an unseasonably warm day, and the house could use the fresh air. 

Karkat complains about it, but at one point you see him leaning against the arm of a chaise, in a pool of sunlight. Napping, like a cat, he sits and soaks up all that sun. 

The way the light falls off of his eyelashes and he looks so relaxed, it’s hard to believe that he could be considered ugly or abnormal by human standards. 

You don’t vacuum that room until he’s left the lounge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! so this thing is essentially done being written! we have four more chapters and then possibly an epilogue if people want one of those (let me know here or on tumblr if ya want and I can write one!). ANYWAYS I hope everyone had a great christmas/whatever you might celebrate, and I'll see you in a week!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dave finds something he's not supposed to

You’ve been living with Karkat for a couple of weeks now. It’s very comfortable. Cleaning, cohabiting. A nice rhythm has started up surrounding the two of you. An average weekday has you waking up for your early classes, riding your bike to campus, classes, lunch, more classes, and then home. Some cleaning, groceries if need be, homework, dinner made by Karkat (he cooks almost every night. Takeout is foreign to him, having lived alone for so long and not showing his face). Chill time or homework after dinner (usually chill time), sleep, and rinse and repeat. 

It’s more than nice.

You feel like you’ve seen another Karkat somewhere, somehow one with different teeth and eyes, but you have no idea why you would think that. 

You still never see Karkat between the hours of midnight and four, if you happen to be awake. 

You find out that Karkat likes shitty romcoms. Well, okay, you actually like a few. Hitch is good. You won’t ever admit it. Karkat’s obsessed with romcoms, though. And, strangely enough, Waterworld. Whatever that’s about. 

Eridan bugs you at lunch again the Thursday of the third week you’re living at Karkat’s. 

He’s sitting on top of your table, right next to your usual spot, when you get there. His head doesn’t move and he manages to look at you out of both the bottom and side of his eyes. Inhuman, you know, but he’s kind of a slimy eel anyway. Wait. Maybe that’s just all the fucking hair gel. 

The bastard grins like a shark when you shove his leg over on the table, and sit down across from John. 

“Are ya in a relationship or somethin? I was talkin ta John here before you arrived and he said ya just moved into the Vantas house,” Eridan begins. Oh great. What a winner.

You glare at John, who looks adequately guilty. He’s instantly forgiven, of course. The glare gets redirected at the object of your hatred, who looks very satisfied to have made you react in any way. 

So of course he wants you to react again.

“Does he know you’re probly jus’ with him for his money? They always used ta be, ‘least I thought,” he says, while looking at his nails. His blonde hair looks extra greasy today. This accusation makes you angry despite being both unfounded and, honestly, a little silly. 

“You’re half right, honestly. I’m his new cleaning lady. You’re welcome for that tidbit of information,” you reply. Usually honesty, instead of anger, seems to work on Eridan. He doesn’t generally do anything with any of the information you give him. He’s not smart enough for that, and gets bored as soon as he can’t get a rise.

This time, though, Eridan looks even more interested.

“He never leaves his house after five years ago, ya know,” he feels obligated to inform you. “Hurt one of our mutual friends pretty bad. Paid for his hospital bills, o’ course, the bleedin’ heart. But like, he just came ta school one day and… flipped out,” Eridan almost purrs. Juicy hot fucking gossip, apparently. 

“It doesn’t really seem like your story to tell, Ampora,” you try to interject, and he just ignores you.

“Nearly cut one a’ his arms off with whatever weird knife he had. But… like I said. That was five years ago. Around when he started never goin’ outside. Small wonders.”

You’re silent. Staring at the suddenly unappealing fries in front of you.

Karkat should have been the one to tell you this, you feel. The thought of you knowing some rumor about your new housemate, instead of the truth from his mouth, isn’t what makes you feel ill. It’s more the idea that at least a small part of you believes what Eridan is saying. That makes you want to throw up a little.

“Maybe he never shows his face cause he feels like the fuckin’ monster he is!” 

The coiled hate inside you writhes. 

“Tavros bled a lot. Was fuckin’ disgustin’.”

You’re ready to wring Eridan’s fucking neck.

“Also. You forgot one a’ my books, Dave. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The table shifts as he slides off of it, creaks. You move away from his hand that he tries to put on your shoulder. He cackles. What the fuck is this, a bad teen drama? You’re not even teens. Eridan walks away, leather shoes tapping on the tiles. Fucker. 

“Dave?” John snaps you out of it. You look up into his eyes. He seems concerned. “Are you okay? You know he doesn’t matter, right?”

You nod. You know. But it doesn’t make you any less angry. 

The sour taste in your mouth won’t go away, now. Pushing your fries at John, you rest your head in your hand. The conversation with the biggest taintmunch on the planet has left you feeling a little sick, but at the same time… you’re curious. Karkat has been hiding something, no matter how awesome he is. 

Is it to do with that friend of theirs? What was that name? Tavros?

As soon as you push open the for-some-reason unlocked door to the west side of the second floor, you regret your decision. He told you to stay out. Is this worth it?

Curiosity pushes you into the hallway, and the door left open behind you. 

Instantly you’re confronted with tons of broken mirrors. Their glass is barely hanging onto the frame, lonely reflections of light and shards of void everywhere. Whoa.

So that’s where… the mirrors…

You move forward, shocked. To your left you see a master bedroom, completely untouched judging by the thick layer of dust. Sheets barely rumpled, left like that for years. The next door, a bathroom with a cracked claw-foot tub. The door on the right opening into a nursery that’s seen better days, toy chairs shattered and crib toppled. A phantom baby’s cry comes to mind. The hearth has clothes and papers in it.

There’s broken furniture everywhere when you go back out into the hall. There’s a painting with gashes through it and half-burned. It’s impossible to make out. A few family portraits in stacks against one wall that you don’t look through. As if you could. It’s so dark in here. The dust makes more light than the old, fogged windows. 

The last room on the end of the hall, though, has a light coming from underneath the door. You push it open, and are suddenly assaulted with a bright pink light. It fades almost as soon as you enter the room and your eyes adjust. 

The weird pink light seems to be coming from a pickle jar on a table by the balcony. A pickle jar? What kind of weird fucking experiments is Karkat doing up here? Is this what he didn’t want you to see? The idea that he’s actually some kind of mad scientist and an experiment gone wrong is why he looks the way he does makes you chuckle.

The jar is fogged, hard to see through. You reach out to smudge off some dust, and suddenly something is eclipsing the light. 

Karkat. He towers over you. 

“I TOLD YOU NOT TO COME IN HERE!” He screams at you. 

Terrified, frozen, you don’t know what to do. Karkat’s teeth gnash in front of your face. Big glowing eyes full of so much anguish that you don’t know how to even think about moving. 

Karkat, seeing this, sees fit to scream again. 

“GET OUT! _OUT!_ ”

You get out. 

Running without thinking, you flee. You can’t take the pain on Karkat’s face anymore. The betrayal, the hurt, the anger. It hits you like a fucking truck, and your body chooses flight as it descends the stairs and leaps off the porch. 

It doesn’t leave the yard, though.

Hand poised to reach out, five feet from the gate, your ankles stop working and you come to a full stop. 

It’s raining out here. Your hair sops into your face, and on your shades as you stand there. Breathing hard, you find drops sliding into your open mouth. The water mixed with the day’s sweat is salty, and breaks you out of your reverie. You look back at where you came from, as the wind slams the door against the jamb, and the entire house seems to creak. 

The impossibly sad howl that comes from the open front door has you turning and running back in. A wet trail follows you up the stairs. By the time you get back to that hallway, you’re just walking again. A wet slap comes from your final footstep in the doorway. From there, you can see him, hunched pathetically over that jar, sitting on the floor.

He’s crying. About to unleash another one of those howls when you speak. 

“I won’t leave,” you say. 

Surprise fills his eyes as he looks up at you. Sets the jar down. Comes over to you, practically crawling half of the five steps it takes to get to you. 

“I’m sorry I yelled at you. Please don’t leave me.”

You don’t have anything else to say. He sinks to his knees, head in his hands, prostrate before you. 

“I’m so alone here,” comes from the curled ball of Karkat on the floor. You put your hand carefully on his arm, and he flinches, but not away from you. 

“I said I’m not gonna leave, dude. I live here, too.”

He’s quiet for a long few minutes before he almost whispers, “Thank you.”

You leave that hall, then, and leave that part of the house. You force yourself not to think of it again. The glowing jar pops back into your head a week later, and you shove it down. Step back under the spray of the shower. Scrub the experience out of your hair. 

He’s still Karkat. It’s fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys asked, so I'll deliver! not one but two lovely epilogues so far. hope everyone is having a happy new year and I'll see you in a week!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> apologies are good to include

When you get home from school the next day, Karkat is waiting for you. There’re bowls of popcorn and Doritos on the table, just about a liter of apple juice and some spiced apple cider, and a huge casserole dish of Ravoli and Cheese that’s still steaming. 

Dropping your bag, you walk over to the table, and inhale over the heat. Your favorite, with lobster and four different cheeses; a recipe that your housemate claims is a family heirloom or something. Karkat looks a little sheepish, but he also looks like he’s been cooking and running his hands through his hair all day. 

“What’s the big occasion?” You ask. 

“I um. This all is for you.” He looks like he’s going to have a fit with how hard he’s trying on the words. Something obviously comes up, and he looks up at you, finally, a little excited and a little manic. “Movie night!”

A few things had been awkward since the day he yelled at you, and told you to get out. Things are tense between you two. Really tense. Well, not so tense that dinner isn’t made and your routine is changed, but the dinners are pretty awk now. Incredibly so. Karkat hasn’t seemed to want to touch you since it happened. 

The oven dings, and Karkat jumps, turns around, and pulls a pie out of the oven. 

“Is that…”

“Apple, yes,” Karkat tells you. And it’s flaky and golden and smells so good.

“Haha, dude, lay off the apples,” you snicker, taking off your jacket. Karkat looks hopeless for a minute. 

“But you like-“

“Yeah, yeah. I was kidding, bro. Thanks for all this,” you amend smoothly, and toe off your shoes before picking up the two bowls. 

“So. What movie?”

Karkat looks so relieved you think you might have just solved world hunger or some shit. You have homework, but it’s Friday. It can wait. 

“Well. There’s Die Hard, I Robot, The Dark Crystal, um. A Knight’s Tale?” Karkat flounders a bit. 

This is kind of beyond Karkat’s normal tendency to just do nice things sometimes. While he sits and flails his hands at the movies he put out, you stare at him. This is. This is an apology. That’s so fucking cute, he tried to guess your favorite movie. He was close, with a Knight’s Tale. Heath Ledger and combat and bad jokes and music that doesn’t fit the timeline? Choice as fuck. 

Karkat gestures to the movies on the table again, and looks at you half-expectantly, half-embarrassed. 

Oh Christ you’re weak. 

While you’re picking up A Knight’s Tale from the table and putting it in to watch, Karkat finishes bringing in the food, as well as two plates. He doesn’t like making a mess. You start putting food on your plate, and he runs out of the room again. He comes back in while you’re settling down and reaching for the remote, and gestures for you to sit forward a bit. 

And he puts a blanket around your shoulders that’s so freshly washed it’s still warm from the dryer. 

It takes you a second to register it, and you’re inhaling and sinking down so far into it you might just get some crumbs on it and not care. He gave you the blanket, he knows the consequences. 

You want to stop him, and make him vocally apologize to you (you might feel a little like you’re taking advantage of the situation), but you know it makes him feel useful and productive to show you how sorry he is in actions rather than words. You give him that. 

Halfway through the movie, Karkat finishes his plate, and takes both plates into the kitchen. He leaves again. 

You aren’t really watching the movie, so you notice when he brings in a steaming towel. 

“Oh my God. My dude. Really?” you say, abandoning all pretense that you hadn’t noticed him doing a lot of things for you for the last couple hours. You tend to have headaches whenever you get back from school on Fridays, but that’s just because of accumulated stress. You hadn’t really been 100% sure that Karkat knew this, but now you are. Especially when he straightens your head toward the television, walks up behind you, and proceeds to give you the world’s best hot towel massage. 

Oh God this is so fucking gay.

But it… 

It feels so good. 

“Let me do this one thing for you, Dave.”

Karkat works the kinks out of your neck and runs his fingers in little circles all over your head like he’s the Sage of the Scalp and you are his divine doctrine. Like he’s been doing this for his whole life. Like he should go to college for this, instead. 

Thumbs work up the back of your neck and back down into your shoulders. Your hair is probably fucking wrecked and you’re so glad he’s standing over you and behind you and there’s a blanket on your lap, because your face is on fire and you might be popping a half-chub from how good this feels. 

Fingers under your jaw and behind your ears and massaging your scalp and it’s so good that you’re almost asleep by the time he stops, drooping and sighing a little in satisfaction as the towel leaves your mussed hair. 

Karkat sits down on the couch after he’s replaced the towel in the laundry, and he waits quietly until you look at him. The movie ended without your notice, and your eyes are half-lidded and you’re probably smiling yourself stupid because you haven’t felt this chill in a long time. 

You look at him, and he visibly braces himself. 

“I’m sorry for yelling at you like I did,” he says, clearly. 

“It’s okay, Karkat,” you reply, and tilt your head. “This was seriously the best apology I’ve ever gotten.”

It’s hard to be mad with a good-smelling blanket around you, and he knows that. His head massage thing was also a point in his favor. You can’t really bring yourself to care, though. If you had to make a big apology, you’d stack the cards in your favor as well. 

You were gonna talk to him about how you forgave him without all this shit anyway.

You reach a socked foot out and push it at his middle. 

“I’m staying, you’re a great roommate so far. Don’t worry about it,” you add, and quirk him a grin. 

Karkat tries grinning back, and only manages a grimace. 

Good enough. 

You shove him with your foot again. “Another movie? And I might have to ask you to do that again sometime. Holy shit dude, you have magic knuckles or something.”

Karkat actually grins this time, and moves forward to replace the movie. 

With some grumbling, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i wasn't planning this chapter, but i figured I'd put it in at the drop of my own metaphorical hat. just got back from a trip, have some fluff! sorry it's so short but like, the next two chapters are at least twice as long. at least. anyhoo! enjoy


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve been in a car accident. Can you come help me out?”

You’ve got each other’s habits down by now. Karkat has started writing a book, he’s caring and cooks well and never raises his voice. Anymore. Much. All the time. Okay, so he has a habit of getting too frustrated with you, but it’s cute now, really. Once you get past the gruff exterior, he has a real heart of gold. Total fucking softie.

On Valentine’s day he makes heart cookies and says you should give some to your friends, which you do. Half of them you keep to yourself, though.

One day in March, you come home to find Karkat crooning softly at a small furry animal on the back porch, and you see that he’s befriended a kitten. Holy shit. One two-day shipping fee later, and his second favorite chair is moved from its spot in the sitting room and replaced with a decent-sized cat tree, right in the other spot of sun. Karkat makes you get a new cat door for the laundry room, which apparently already had a hole in it for one.

On April Fools’ Day, you plaster the doors and refrigerator and pretty much everything in the kitchen with paper fishes before you go to class. You come home to them all stuck to your bedroom door and furniture. You still find some weeks later. 

On May fifth, you go out with John and have a half-price margarita party between the two of you in the name of White American Cultural Appropriation. When you come home drunk as a skunk, Karkat carries you upstairs and tucks you in. You find an irritated note to you under a glass of water and a couple of extra-strength ibuprofen the next morning. 

You get a bunch of plants from Jade for the kitchen and living room to brighten up the house, and now you also have to water plants and Karkat grumbles. But you can tell he likes them. He murmurs to the orchids when you’re not in the room. He likes them. 

You’ve gotten really good at ignoring Eridan The Epic Cuntstain, now, and shoving him off pretty fast. Luckily, with finals approaching, he becomes more and more busy and starts leaving you alone. 

Right after finals at the end of the school year, you get a call from Bro.

“I’ve been in a car accident. Can you come help me out?”

It’s all you need before you decide to go to Texas. He’s the only family you’ve got, and you need to take care of him. You have more than enough saved up for a plane ticket. Karkat sees you booking plane tickets, and seems to kind of still behind you before telling you that he has frequent flyer miles and can save you the money and get you into first class.

His voice sounds sad, but he also helps you pack, and listens patiently to your instructions on following the plant care sheet Jade gave you. He says something about getting a new grocery runner, it’s no problem, go, take care of your brother. 

Before you leave the front door to get in John’s truck, Karkat comes up to you and slips a small enclosable hand mirror into your palm. “Just… keep this with you. Okay? I got it a long time ago. Just trust me.”

It’s a weird request, but you agree. It’s the least you can do.

You look at the thing on the plane. Old, maybe ivory? Wow. And embossed on the back with a rose that is shedding petals. Not actively, no, but it’s obviously rendered that way.

Fortunately you’re able to pick up Bro’s rental car at the airport. You pick him up from the hospital, and immediately take him over so you can fuss over him. He’s banged up pretty bad.

Four broken ribs, broken wrist and two bones in his hand on the left side, tons of bruises and a cut where the seatbelt shoved into his neck. More cuts where he got glass in the arms he had put up to cover his face. The seatbelt left bruising in its shape, as well, and the airbag broke his nose. His collarbone is apparently just barely cracked, too. It makes you so scared to see Bro like that, wincing from his whiplash and every time he moves. 

It must be the drugs he’s on because he chats your goddamn ear off about it in the car. Rear ended into an intersection, and then broadsided by a small car going through the light. He was lucky to get off as good as he did, they kept saying. Lucky he didn’t break his legs, too. 

Bro passes out around nine in the evening, but you can’t sleep. You almost lost your only remaining non-distant relative. You watch his sleeping shoulders.

A couple of days after you get him home, you have a spare moment and think to call Karkat. 

He sounds so happy to hear from you that you almost smile. You have to make sure he’s watering the plants in the kitchen and following what Jade wrote down. 

“Oh thank god you’re capable of taking care of yourself. Bro isn’t even conscious half the time but I still have to watch him, I feel like. Don’t even get me started on how I’m gonna pay the bills. It shouldn’t be too bad, Bro has a decent amount of money saved up and our insurance isn’t too bad.”

“Let me stop you right there,” Karkat injects into your monologue, and you do just that. 

“I can help pay for the costs. If it doesn’t make you too uncomfortable,” he makes sure to assure you. Man, what a great guy. Acting like he’s giving you an option. 

“How would you even?” You ask, even though you already know the answer.

“Just tell me the amount you need that’s extra or ridiculous to cover and I’ll deposit it into the account I made for me helping with your tuition,” he interrupts again. 

Ugh, that’s right. He’s paying for that, too. Is he your sugar daddy or something? “I can’t let you do that, man. You’re-“ 

“I insist. Come on, Dave, my parents were philanthropists and it’s obviously cloyingly genetic. I have a lot of money coming at me every month, and nothing much to spend it on.”

You want to resist again. But he really wants to give you the money. It’s not like it’s too incredibly much, anyway, right? You have decent insurance. 

So you tell him the amount on the bill in your hand. He transfers it over.

The two of you talk a bit more, and Karkat sounds pretty upset when you have to get off the phone. But you need to help Bro change his bandages soon. 

“I’ll call in a few days if I can. I’ll be busy. I agreed to help Bro with some of his work for a bit, because he can’t just entirely stop working. I mean you don’t even need to know that he sells fetish toys for a living,” you joke. Wait, you fucking said that. Shit.

“He does what.”

“Look, people with weird fetishes pay good money for their fetishes and bro found a niche market.”

“Jesus Christ, Dave.”

“Yeah, I know. Anyway, talk to you later babe.”

“Don’t call me that. Later,” Karkat finishes, and ends the call. 

After that, you have a few long weeks of taking care of your older brother. Taking care of him is exhausting. You make deliveries even though you thought you were done with that shit, to nearby customers. You help make some toys (dear god don’t let me look at them too closely), replace bandages and run errands and stuff for Bro while he’s confined to his bed.

You call Karkat back every few days, checking up on him. He had to start getting his groceries ordered again, and he’s not sure about the new delivery girl. Apparently she seems nice enough, if a little obsessed with cats and making animal puns and noises. 

Karkat always sounds so relieved to hear your voice on the phone. It gets to you a bit. You find yourself missing Karkat’s company, too.

“When are you coming back?” Karkat asks you. The barest note of desperation tinges his voice. 

“Probably another week or two, I’m guessing,” you reply, making sure to lilt your voice in a reassuring way. Ugh, god. 

You and Karkat exchange goodbyes, and you hang up. 

“Your face looks so lame when you make that expression,” Bro tells you from across the room. A well-aimed smuppet hits him in the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! meant to post this one sunday but forgot, my bad. hope y'all are having a good night and all that :) peace


	8. finale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> karkat's POV is visited again, his house is also visited, and dave can't really help bro clean his cast right now 
> 
> 8)

Dave has been gone for three weeks already, and you’re a little sad. It feels really bad to be alone again, after months and months of daily human contact that you desperately needed. This wasn’t something you saw happening, honestly, being alone. Not even your concerning dependency on Dave’s presence surprises you, though. You were alone for so long. 

It definitely doesn’t surprise you that you fell in love with the first person to say more than eight words to your face in a row, in five years. It hurts, this love. And it doesn’t make sense. He’s been there for you, concerned for you. Did you favors most people would not. Kept returning. He looked at your face without fear.

Dave surprised you. He came back.

Not that it matters. Your grace period has almost expired, and then this face will be permanent. Like Boo Radley, confined to your house and almost blind with the dark. Except probably less contact with small children. Maybe you’ll get very good at makeup or spend some of your money on cosmetic surgery. There’s no doubt in your mind that Dave will come back. He doesn’t know about the curse. He can’t.

But how long will he stay?

Despite the summer heat, you wrap the massive fur blanket closer around yourself. Maybe after your time runs out, before Dave gets back, you can clean up a bit of what you’re refusing to call the west wing. The room full of mirrors can be dashed, you can pile all the broken furniture for the trash man. 

You could resign yourself to sleeping on something other than the messy pile of blankets and pillows in your room. If you end up sleeping at all. You barely sleep much nowadays as it is. Especially with Dave gone. He helped you sleep before. His presence.

The gazebo you’re sitting next to creaks in the wind, and you let a sob escape your lips. Just one. You’ve cried too much already. The pickle jar in your arms makes the barest sound against the grass as you bend over it, and close your eyes. The rose inside flickers with magic that touches your skin and doesn’t let go. It knows.

You don’t though. Not all of it, at least. You know what Redglare told you, that you would lose your human appearance forever. No more humanity for four hours a night, you guess. It makes you sad to have to turn back, so maybe it’s not a total loss, though. 

What about your inner humanity, though? Would you lose your ability to talk? Would you forget how to read, or write? Would you forget Dave? 

Would you forget your parents?

Another sob escapes, but you won’t cry. Your too-long legs wrap criss-crossed around the base of the jar. 

“Time is almost up, Karkat Vantas,” a voice says. 

You open your eyes to look at the rose through the open top of the jar. There’s no need to move, or acknowledge the woman now standing with you. Redglare knows that you know it’s her. 

“What will you do, when all your hopes are lost?” You hear the stretch of leather boots, and see the tip of her cane tap your jar. Fucking pickle shit. She crouches in front of you. It’s all you can do to remain silent. If you don’t antagonize her, maybe she’ll give you more time. 

“You’ve barely tried, prince,” she says next.

“I’m still not a damn prince,” you reply. You know what you are. 

“You’re no monster, yet, either, you know. I would know this after five years of paying you visits.”

You can’t look at her, still. Her bright red eyes. 

“Where is the little magic compact I gave you for your twenty-first birthday? The one to let you see outside this dank old house?”

“The internet exists, Redglare. Besides, you know where it is.”

“… that I do,” she agrees. “Sneaky of you, giving it to him. In case he wants to see you? Or… for when the curse ends?”

The second to last petal falls, and lands next to the rest of the still-plump, immortal flower pieces in the bottom of the glass vessel.

She stands back up straight.

“If nothing happens, I will be back in just… oh.” Her voice grabs onto a new level of her usual toxicity and harsh wisdom. The last time you heard this was the first time you met her. “Tomorrow. Right? I’ll see you tomorrow. Vantas.”

She disappears, and her words leave you demolished inside. 

You cry, now. 

“God, I heard a noise, was that a dog? Since when did you get a dog, Vantas?” You hear, and abruptly there is so much terror in you. Ampora’s son. Today is the day he usually comes to drop off your check. You forgot. How did he get inside? Dead grass crunches behind you, under a foot. You turn.

You know what he sees. A hulking man rising to his feet, with horns, yellow teeth and gray skin. He will be seeing a massive amount of bristling fur on a pair of broader shoulders, and bright red eyes.

The fear in his eyes is telling enough, and he shouts, “What the fuck are you?! A monster! You really are a monster!”

Reflexively you bare your teeth at the mention of your monstrosity, and snarl. 

Eridan pulls out his concealed handgun.

 

\------

Something in your pocket vibrates while you’re helping Bro scratch the inside of his cast. You take out the offending object, thinking it’s your phone. But it’s the mirror. 

That’s weird, right?

It’s glowing from the inside. You step away from Bro, handing him the canned air, and open the clasp. The tiny image on the three-inch round is hard to make out, but you can tell at first glance that it’s not your own reflection. 

After some focusing, you can see something. It’s Karkat! A little bit of happiness rises in your chest.

“Hey punk, get over here and help. This is difficult to do alone,” Bro complains, and you wave him off.

There’s so much fear in Karkat’s eyes that you can see. 

He’s staring down the barrel of a gun. The gun is held by… Eridan? What the fuck? The mirror focuses on Karkat, though, and his teeth are exposed now in what you recognize as defensive fear. Sweat is rolling down his brow. He has no way out, here. 

Where did Karkat get this thing? What is it? How is it showing you this? Something about it rings with the truth, despite all these questions, and you know one thing. Karkat’s in trouble. You have to get to him. 

“I have to go. Sorry bro.”

Bro stops scratching as you rush around, grabbing keys and wallet and cell phone. “What the fuck?”

“Bye dude,” you reply, and sprint out of the apartment.

You’re on a plane in half an hour. How you managed it beats you, but you’re sitting on that goddamn plane with one thing in mind. Next destination: College Town. 

The mirror is throbbing in your pocket, somehow hot to the touch and resonating with a heartbeat not your own. What even is this magic shit? The heartbeat increases dramatically, and you open it with alarming urgency. 

The glass cracks. Karkat is bleeding, now, and clutching his shoulder. Or is it his upper arm? You feel like you’re going to vomit. 

The glass cracks again, and he stoops to the ground. 

Blood is seeping from a new wound on his thigh. 

You might actually vomit. There’s nothing you can do but stare at the mirror in your hands. You flip it restlessly in your hands, and see the rose on the back has… changed? Nothing escapes you, really. The leaves on the rose are now withered, and dry. Shriveled, one leaf drops from the stem. There looks like what appears to be only one petal left on the rose.

What even is this magic shit? Is this… is it telling you… oh god. 

You turn the mirror over so fast you almost drop it between your feet, and flip it open again. Eridan has stepped back from Karkat’s outreached hand. 

“I didn’t mean…” his lips seem to form, expression chock full of horror. He turns and runs. Karkat stretches his arm out too far, a weak attempt at following. He falls straight over, into the grass and dirt. Blood splatters. 

You slam the mirror closed. Two hours. Only two hours until your plane lands. You can get home to him. You can get to him.

Ever twenty minutes, you pop the thing back open to make sure he’s still breathing. You watch him as you book a cab from your phone. Why does this plane even have wifi? A huge part of you doesn’t care that the wifi is probably supposed to fuck with the plane or whatever. You’ve probably just been stuck in the stone age for too long. 

A glance back at the mirror shows Karkat still breathing. 

The cab was weirdly cheap, too. Strange things have been happening to you all day. 

Karkat is lying there, on the ground. You watch him for the rest of the flight, eyes glued to his prone form. He doesn’t move much. Has he given up? Or passed out? You can see him breathing, right? So he’s not dead already.

Right?

As you exit the plane and run down the ramp, a woman with red glasses grabs your arm, and winks at you. You shove her off, and her skin flashes a familiar gray. You continue running. Karkat… Karkat is more important. 

The cabbie doesn’t even ask for your address, and for some reason you don’t question it. As long as you get home. You leap from the door after shoving some bills into the front seat, and a flash of teal catches your eye. The woman with the red glasses is driving the cab away by now, though. Out through those huge gates.

What the fuck?

No! No, Karkat.

In the mirror, Karkat’s breathing is shallower, and you sprint around the house. 

Oh god.

No.

Karkat is there. Blood is everywhere, it seems like. On the grass, soaking the fur that he likes to sit under on cold days. He’s visibly shaking, his breathing is too fast now, a drop of blood falls from the fur and you can almost hear it crash to the ground below. There’s a glowing jar next to his body, broken in two and displaying a huge and twisted flower that’s closer to death than he is. Hopefully. The ground around the broken jar is black. And red. Blood. 

You’re yelling and running to him, chanting his name like it’ll repair the wound. The shades fly off your face and you don’t even care that the sun is too bright in your eyes. 

He doesn’t make a sound as you take him into your arms, and that seems bad. Blood makes your hands slippery as you touch his neck and take his pulse. Too fast. He’s still breathing, but only barely. 

No.

The shaking gets stronger, breathing shallower.

No, no, no no no no. 

You hold him, cry into his chest. Clutching him to you is all you’re good for now. Kiss his chin, cheeks, his closed eyelids. 

 

 _Please no_. 

 

“Please don’t die, Karkat, Please,” you say. Your body feel separate from what’s going on. His breathing just… stops. And you can feel his entire body spasm, before going deathly still.

“Karkat! Karkat please. Please.”

 

There’s no response. You weren’t expecting one.

 

“Just… don’t leave me.”

 

A bird chirps somewhere. It _hurts._

Karkat’s body seems cold, even though it shouldn’t be. Not yet. But if he bled out?

Why were you so far away?

“Please. I…”

It’s quiet. Death is so quiet.

“I love you.”

You press your face into his forehead, closing your eyes. 

It’s over. Everything is over.

But then… **you see something.**

A glow brighter than the sunset behind you glares off your eyelids. Karkat moves, and you jolt. He’s… sitting up? You open your eyes, and have to close them immediately. The light blinds you and everything is suddenly colder than winter here.

Karkat’s body isn’t sitting up. It’s floating, in the air. What the actual fuck?

You force yourself to open your eyes when the blanket drops off of Karkat completely and onto the ground near your knees. The rosy sky seems dim in comparison to the swirling fireworks around his body. His eyes slam open, spilling waterfalls of bright white onto the ground around you and onto his body.

Sclera and mouth alight, he swirls in the most cliché transformation sequence ever before he’s falling slowly into your waiting arms.

 

 

_And he opens his eyes._

 

 

He’s lighter than before, and he notices you almost like an afterthought to staring at the rainbow sky. His irises are auburn, reflecting the descending sun like you’ve never seen. His face is the unclear memory, pink lips and brown skin. Nose a button, mouth perfect gentle moue, and teeth still a little crooked. He’s... 

“I… can see colors,” he whispers.

He’s the same, though. Same heavy brows and wild hair. Same uncertainty omnipresent in his expression. Same affection for you, in the pull at the corner of his lip.

Same Karkat. Different, but the one you know. The one you love.

His eyelashes are so long. 

Karkat talks again, and his voice is still growly, but softer. Less burdened by a mouth full of fangs. 

“Dave? You… where am I? Why are you… are you fucking crying?”

You gasp, and desperately grasp the back of his neck. He’s alive. Sparkling rust and galaxy eyes practically searing into your mind.

“Karkat, you’re so… fucking short.” 

“Oh my god, seriously?”

You have to kiss him, then. It’s what heroes do, right? After admitting their love. 

Love?

So you make quick work of trying to swallow his breath with your mouth. It hurts when your teeth clack together in the middle but he’s here, and warm, and alive.

Love.

He reaches up to push away your face. His face is lit up like the fucking Fourth of July. It’s the best. 

When he sees his hand, though, he yelps. 

“What? I’m… human again?”

There’s a huge moment of silence, where Karkat stares at his hand and a massive amount of different and equally indescribable emotions flash, in turn, across his face. He looks so unbelieving, so happy and scared and on the verge of tears joyful. His eyes find yours, and he sees the story there or something, because he throws his arms around your neck.

Karkat’s so small, and he fits perfectly in your hands. The most surprised, but satisfied and happy noise zings against your own mouth.

He clings to you. He’s so alive.

So alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so! this is the last official storyline chapter of For Who Could Ever Love a Beast! I have two epilogues coming after this by popular demand! hope y'all like them and this and have a good week. tally-ho. 
> 
> thank you to all of my readers and commenters for your support and thrill for this fic. :) it means a whole lot to me and I love you all. I decided not to reply to comments on this one so that I could separate myself from it and get more into the story (if that makes sense). And I hope you all know how much I love you!


	9. EPILOGUE 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey! so I wrote two epilogues, by popular demand. :3 and I hope you enjoy them. Some highlights from the first few months after Karkat turns back.

Right after Karkat recovered from bursting into fireworks and shit, he wanted to lay down and go to bed. By bed, he apparently meant your bed, where he landed like a wet sack and didn’t get up for twelve hours. With you. Which would have been excellent if that didn’t mean that he didn’t want to let you go. 

Yeah, he let you give him a change of clothes and wipe the blood off of his skin, as you did for yourself, but after that he just wanted to sleep. His eyes were quickly losing alertness, and you grabbed and plugged in your phone next to the night stand before leading him to be horizontal.

Karkat manages to cling to you like a barnacle, while simultaneously starfishing over the queen-sized bed. It’s adorable, mostly. Almost dying and then undergoing whatever kind of magical transformation that he did was apparently very exhausting. Not to mention the fact that the cat has now taken up semi-permanent residence on the middle of his lower back, and has been purring loudly for several hours.

But you really need to pee now.

You’d managed to distract yourself by watching him and marveling at the fact that he was so alive, and human, and here. And then you’d called Bro and told him about all the shit that happened. Sorta. You told Bro that Karkat had texted you that he had gotten hurt, but was okay now. 

Bro wasn’t too impressed, but made a few cooing noises when you’d mentioned any kind of feelings and you knew he forgave you for leaving so suddenly. He also mentioned that he’d guilted Jake into coming home early from his extended archaeology expedition in Central America, a couple days before you left in a hurry. Thank god you weren’t there anymore. Injury don’t stop Bro from being very… loud… and weird. 

Karkat makes this incredibly unhappy noise when you finally manage to extract yourself from him. He curls in on himself when you leave the bed, and you lay a thick blanket over his gentle form. You’ll be back. Besides, the cat moved into your warm spot already, so he won’t be too lonely.

It’s hard to leave Karkat there, but you go to take care of your business. You choose to not use the en-suite so that you won’t wake up Karkat; you know how much noise the pipes in your room make. Hand on the door, you’re about to go in when you remember the blanket that’s probably still sitting on the ground outside. 

A look at Karkat through the crack of the door shows him still lying comfortably in a stream of early morning light from the window. You can spare some time to go outside and pick up the trash you’d left in the yard. 

You make sure to take some plastic gloves and a trash bag. 

There’s still blood on the blanket, you notice. Yeah, that’s never coming out, but you won’t throw it away until you ask Karkat about it. It doesn’t seem like something he’d buy, so it could be an heirloom for all you know. 

There’s also… that jar. The pickle jar. Still has the Vlasic label. It’s broken into quite a few pieces on the ground, and you gather them into your hands after stuffing the blanket into the trash bag. The largest piece easily holds all the smaller ones. There are a bunch of rose petals in the bottom, and a thorny stem. 

Something seems… significant about the rose petals. You’re not sure what yet.

Both the jar and the bag go in the mudroom off the laundry room, and you head upstairs. 

Karkat is awake and staring blearily at a small object in his hand when you get back up to him.

It’s the mirror. Did you leave it lying around or something? 

Karkat lifts his eyes to see you when you close the door behind yourself. “It’s almost shattered,” he observes drily. 

“Yeah. Happened when I was on the plane to get here. I didn’t do it, I swear. Shit’s fucked.” You slide onto the bed. The cat leaps from your pillow and leaves the room.

As you inch closer to him, a little awkwardly, he turns his head into your chest. You kiss the top of his head, where his horns had been. 

“Sorry I left. Had to pee and pick up outside. Didn’t want to wake you up,” you explain, and nuzzle into his hair. Karkat doesn’t seem to mind that you’re being incredibly touchy-feely despite having minimal physical contact with another person for years. Maybe it’s because you said- 

“You meant it…?” His face is carefully straight. Flat eyes and brows. If you look just right, there’s also a frustrated grimace. 

So your maybe was a definitely. “Of course, man.”

He doesn’t reply but instead wraps his hands in your shirt and pulls it.

The mirror digs into your side when you shift closer, and you pick it up and put it on the nightstand.

Karkat’s voice shakes when he starts to talk again. “The curse made me… made me feel like...” 

He seems to be having a hard time talking about it right now, but you don’t silence him. Instead, you make him an offer. 

“If you want to wait to explain, you can. It’s okay. You’ve had a long day.”

“Fuck No.”

“Alright.”

“Just, it was… it was a curse, what made me like that. You have to understand. Terezi decided to have a little self-pity party without inviting me, got butthurt that I wanted to kick her out into the rain when she broke into my home, and then cursed me.”

“Terezi?” You ask.

“Redglare,” he says, like it confirms everything. And it kind of does, if you think back to the weird woman with the crimson gaze.

Karkat looks up at you with the most doubtful doe eyes you’ve ever seen. Part of you realizes it’s not about when the mirror cracked.

Karkat continues, “She said that I could only be back to myself if someone... but you can’t possibly…”

Fucking fairy tales. Magic. God, no wonder. This is such a crazy weird situation.

“Of course I meant it, Karkles. Babe. McStuffins. Kat O’Malley.”

His doe eyes turn to the old familiar irritated ones, and you win a frown and a little shove for your efforts. “Shut up.”

“I really do love you, though,” you say, and Karkat pauses mid-hair stroke. He keeps stroking in a cyclical path, like there are still little horns there. The irritated eyes fill with something passionate for a minute, like fire, before he seals them closed and groans like, super loud right into the skin of your neck.

“Fuck you, Strider, master of the worst timing ever.”

“Also expert gutter cleaner. You forgot that bit,” you reply, and he groans again, turning his back to you.

Only thing to do now is spoon into him from behind, obviously. He relaxes back into your chest, and pulls one of your arms over so he can hold your hand.

“Right,” he says, and that’s that. He falls asleep almost instantly, and you fancy yourself a nap in the sun.

You and Karkat have watermelon slices when you wake up at about two in the afternoon, the next day. You both are way too warm from cuddling in the summer heat, but he sticks to you anyway. You rinse the melon and spray him with the sink hose. He tries to growl at you, but finds himself missing necessary components to make the sound.

It’s weird.

Karkat looks confused, relieved, and also like he might burst into tears in a bad way.

\----

Summer with Karkat is fantastic. You, Dave, using the word fantastic? Stranger things have happened, honestly. And Karkat is, well, fantastic. 

Karkat’s not used to going outside during the day anymore, but he goes out to help you repaint the old gazebo. You throw too much paint at each other just doing that one, simple task. He gets a professional team to repaint the outside of the house. 

Karkat went outside enough to get himself a bit of a farmer’s tan, though, and you can’t help poking at the stark lines where his tank top sat on his shoulders until he yells at you for it. 

He’s getting better at talking, but you think his voice will always be a little rough. That’s okay, though. It’s pretty sexy. 

\----

Karkat meets John. It’s a very unusual thing that you totally didn’t plan if Karkat asks anyone. You and your super awesome great boyfriend are sitting down for a movie night when the doorbell rings. 

Karkat totally jumps halfway out of his seat at the sound, and glares at you. “Who the fuck is that?”

“Guys!! I brought popcorn!” John’s voice rings out from behind the door. Karkat looks very afraid for a moment before seeming to realize that it’s just John, and that you TOTALLY planned for them to meet tonight. You want to show Karkat to everyone, you think, but John is a good damn start.

You go to let John in, and when you return, Karkat is trying to make his escape into the kitchen. 

“Hey!” John goes up to him after a gesture from you, and Karkat pauses before turning around. He glares at the hand being held out to him. He takes the hand. He looks at you like he’s threatening something, and he shakes the hand. 

John laughs. “You don’t have a gross amount of zits! You’re actually…” he gets close to Karkat, too close. “… kind of adorable.” There’s an awful spark in his eye, and you know he’s planning on making Karkat’s friendship if it kills him. 

This is so awesome. 

\----

One of Karkat’s first outings, outside of the gates around the house, is a meeting with a Mr. Cronus Ampora. You try to dress alright, seeing as this is basically the man paying your tuition bills as Karkat lives off of his leftover inheritance, but the man himself shows up to the small café in old black jeans and a white v-neck. And he’s like, fifty. With black converse and like the top of the grossest tuft of hair ever sticking out of the bottom of his shirt collar. 

Karkat seems happy to see him, though, and he seems really nice. You give him the benefit of the doubt. 

Turns out Eridan has had his gun license revoked for a separate offense, but shortly afterward was arrested for possession of a large amount of cocaine. The judge didn’t want to overlook so much at one time, so Eridan is now… wait for it… in prison. Higher brow prison, but still. He’s behind some fucking bars.

“I got so much ta deal wit’, an’ den alla dis crap from my own fuckin son.”

“He’s a real treasure,” you reply. Karkat elbows you. 

Cronus laughs, loud and salty. “Tell me abouttit kid.”

\----

Some more things that happened.

Somewhere around mid-June, Karkat announces he needs to get his car inspected. 

The conversation goes something like you being surprised at the fact that he has a car, him being insulted that you didn’t even wonder what the “fucking shit orange garage” was for, and then you agreeing and him driving you both to the nearest inspection shop to get it done. He also gets his license renewed through the mail, since his twenty-fifth birthday passed. 

Karkat goes on another few outings pretty soon in the summer, too. He really wants to go to the zoo, for instance. He also wants to go to the local botanical gardens, where the two of you sit in the grass and he sticks a lot of flowers in your hair. “It’s romantic, you piece of shit, stop laughing.”

He takes pictures of it and uploads them to his new facebook page that he made. The old page was so far buried where he’d ordered it put, that it wouldn’t be worth it to find again. He has about fifteen friends on facebook that he actually wants on there; two of them are you and John. Another two are Rose and Jade, because they were the first two to like your relationship status. Another is your old boss, Meenah. He has conversations with her that make him happy. You think it might be because she’s also from a wealthy family, and made it for herself separate from that. 

He also adds that girl who delivered him food for the weeks you were gone, and her really weird bodybuilder friend. He posts a lot of shitty memes and constantly sends you invites for Bejeweled Blitz just to piss you off. 

Karkat also wants to visit his parents’ grave. 

He cries a lot that day. He tells you that his uncle, baby sister, and paternal grandparents are also buried there. The dates on the headstones he points out all end their lives at the same time. 

When Karkat demands to go grocery shopping with you, you say okay. It might be too many people, since he wants to go on a Saturday afternoon, but you still humor him. He lasts maybe half an hour before he has to go wait in the car for you to finish and go through checkout. It’s okay. 

The next day, he wants to go to the grocery store again. So determined. 

You find something in the extensive list in your brain, and you take him back to the store. He’s much better this time.

Bro visits around the beginning of July, and brings you the crap you left at his house. You hadn’t even realized how much you missed your laptop until he brought it with him, cause you had been spending so much time doing stuff with Karkat. 

Bro takes one look at Karkat and goes, “Where the fuck’s the rest of ‘im,” and then proceeds to sleep in a different bed every night for the week he’s staying in the house. “Testin’ all the beds, little man. Fuckin’ nice place.”

Karkat hires a new cleaning lady shortly after Bro leaves (definitely not out of fear of what he did to the beds, Dave! Your brother seems perfectly… nice. Stop laughing!). She’s a relative of his old housekeeper, who’d apparently moved away five years ago but he found through facebook and old family contacts. The new lady comes to clean all the floors and dust and do laundry, one day for each task a week. It’s nice to not have to do everything. Makes you feel less like a slave.

“A _love_ slave,” you joke with Karkat, and he punches your shoulder and storms into a different room, face aflame. 

A week or two later in the summer, Karkat finishes and publishes his book. A careful combination of clumsy schmoozing and exploiting family connections gets him a contact in the industry. It sells okay. He’s really happy about it. 

Karkat ends up not being able to sleep outside of your bed, which, hey, non-issue. He moves into your room, and almost immediately starts work on the west hall. He hires a contractor to help fix all the scrapes and structural damage to door jambs and walls that he’d caused, but clears all the furniture and mirrors out himself. 

John offers to help out, and oddly Karkat lets him help, but doesn’t want your assistance. Something about needing to do it without your support, which makes sense. John’s been cool as shit ever since he found out Karkat’s helping you with your education just because he wanted to. He was suspicious that Karkat wanted something else from you in return, but you were happily able to deny every idea in that vein.

You’re picking up the bags of old clothes and used laundry that they had left for you just inside the hall, when you sight the rare shirtless Karkat in its natural habitat. A few choice comments about it later, and John is groaning and trying to shove more trash bags into your arms so that you can vacate faster. Looking over his shoulder gives you a primo view of Karkat’s flushing chest, though, and you let your eyes trail up to his.

He’s… he’s _smoldering_ at you.

Oh Christ. 

He looks very interested in your propositions, now. And you know it’s on purpose when he leans forward and picks up a stack of mostly broken chairs so that he can carry them downstairs to John’s truck. The muscles shift nicely under his skin, and you hear him snicker meanly when you can’t stop staring at his biceps. 

Okay, that’s enough. Sending him a little look of your own, you grab the laundry bags you can. 

“Please save it for the bedroom, guys,” John complains, even as you’re leaving.

Something’s changed about Karkat ever since he started cleaning out those rooms a week ago. Maybe it’s the endorphins from the exercise? Yeah, it’s probably not that, you’re not stupid. But it’s boring and depressing to talk about emotional development through clearing out the bedrooms of dead relatives. 

He pulls you naked into bed for the first time that night. It’s better than you thought it could be, outshining your time in the shower with your hand. Yeah of course you thought about Karkat. You were giving him time he obviously needed, so it was only decent to take care of yourself so that he wouldn’t feel pressure to.

Karkat rolls you around and like, fucking owns you and you’re completely okay with that. He puts his body to yours so well, and you almost embarrass yourself with how okay you are with that. Every kiss is like returning that breath you’d taken from him, and him giving you life to live as well. When he comes, with hands on your chest and scratching you with invisible claws, he’s the most handsome and beautiful person in the world. 

Your body surges into his, and you mar that beauty he has with love bites and hickeys and your own scratches. You fall back into the pillows with him, and he’s giggling at the noise you made when you finished, and he’s so perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so yeah this is the penultimate chapter of FWCELAB which has to be the WORST acronym ever. Also by request and inspiration from my readers here, I'm writing a shorter, maybe 7 or 10k? (because of time constraints on my life right now) AU. another fairy tale one! this one is gonna be funnier and way more meta, and it's real fun to write so far! anyway, even though that one's almost done, I'm gonna hold off on posting it until this one is finished and online in its entirety. Hope everyone's having a great weekend and I love you all!


	10. Epilogue 2!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our final episode. Things are concluded. Most things. Karkat goes back to school for a bit!

Karkat accompanies you to classes at the actual university that fall, instead of just doing classes online. 

He’s so nervous about his first day that he makes you doubt your decision to agree with him that he should go back to physical school for his last year. 

“I’ve been out a lot with you but what if I freak out in the middle of the day?” He asks. Car idling, he’s parked in a spot in the dense center of the main student lot thirty minutes before your first class together. You’d made sure that the two of you would have your first class together at the start of this semester. 

“You’ll be fine, babe,” you say, for the fourth time that morning. 

“What if… what if I see my… my old friends?”

“We talked about this, dude, if you see them, then you’ll see them. Come on, now or never.”

He seems to steel himself, and opens his car door wide. He doesn’t say much on the way to the Business building, and you stay quiet, too. It was like this to a lesser extent every time the two of you went somewhere new this summer. The zoo hadn’t been too bad, since you went in the morning on a week day. The grocery store had been worse, since it was a weekend. 

There are students everywhere, here, but Karkat doesn’t seem to be paying them too much attention. Does he know something you don’t, or has he gotten better at pretending?

The TA is there at your first class. He’s got his badge on, a good identifier, and a pretty decent-sized relaxed Mohawk. He’s standing next to a Korean guy wearing what looks like blue and red 3D glasses in the middle of the day. 

Karkat stops in the middle of the hallway. Since your left arm is around his shoulders, you get yanked a little. You follow his line of sight, and it hits you that maybe the two of you should have talked more seriously about what would happen if he actually ran into his old acquaintances. 

“Did you hear about Eridan?” Mohawk is saying. 

“Yeah, heard he’s gonna be locked up for awhile. I mean, god, not only did he shoot someone but then like, a month later with the drugs?” 3D glasses says. He laughs like a wasp might, if wasps could laugh. “I was just waiting for his sorry ass to get slammed for something.”

The two spot you watching them, first. Probably because of the bright pink hoodie that says ‘SIN’ on it in extra-bold capitals. They give you strange looks before they notice someone else with you, and their eyes slide easily over to Karkat.

And they stop talking, then. Tension in this hallway could be cut with the broken-off hull of the Titanic. At least the flow of the people in the hallway has stopped, and you’re not just standing out in the open as much as you could be. You slide your hand off of Karkat’s shoulder and into his palm. 

Deciding to be the big kid and make the first move, you yank Karkat forward so that you’re standing in arm’s reach of the two weirdly tall guys. Well, 3D glasses guy is pretty fucking tall, but the other one is about your height. Holding out your empty hand, you introduce yourself. 

“Dave Strider, the one and only. I’ll be taking History 2620 in room 111. You my TA?” Mohawk rips his gaze away from Karkat, and looks at you. 

“Uh, y-yeah. Yeah. That’s me.” He shakes your hand. And goes right back to staring gape-jawed at Karkat, who has now looked straight at the floor. 

“Hey, Tavros,” he says. Ohhh. This is Tavros. But he looks completely fine… Fucking damnit you dirty little liar Erida-

3D glasses just said something. 

“KK?”

Karkat looks at you desperately, like he wants to run away. He flinches at the nickname. You tighten your fingers between his, and hold fast. 

“Hi, Sollux,” he says back, and fuck. Two people he used to know, close friends, on the first day. Jesus.

Tavros finally opens his mouth after what feels like eons of silence. 

“Why’d you, disappear?” He asks. Some kind of stammer in his voice that you didn’t hear when he was talking to Sollux alone. 

“Lots of, uh. Extenuating circumstances. And then there was that day…” Karkat says, like it explains everything. It’s way too vague, and Tavros is frowning. But it’s not like Karkat can tell him everything. There’s a limit to the plausibility of a story.

“You were gone for, five years. It was some nail scratches, I was, fine.”

“But I hurt you.”

Tavros’s frown melts, and he shoves his books into Sollux before taking the three steps forward to wrap Karkat up in a hug. Holy shit, this guy is nice. 

“It’s fine, Karkat. It hurt more, that you didn’t come back. Thank you. F-for helping my parents pay the bills.”

Karkat is… fuck, he’s crying. First day of school, and your boyfriend’s already crying on another man’s shoulders. “I couldn’t come back. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all good,” Tavros says, and pushes Karkat back. You wrap your arm back around his shoulder in what you hope is still comforting right now. 

Sollux speaks up, then. 

“It really sucked that you just left like that, though, KK.” Tavros elbows him, and he glares back, pushing his books back at him. Sollux looks into Karkat’s eyes, making sure to stoop a little to catch onto his height level. Like reflex. It’s interesting. 

“No one knew what to do,” he continues. “You know, GZ still kicks himself for what he said to you.”

Tavros laughs, like this is suddenly a lighthearted conversation. “Oh yeah, Gamzee. He still lives in town. We should all get together now that you’re back.”

His stutter seems to be gone. 

Karkat snorts, and you look at him. He’s… suddenly fine? Sollux’s tough love shtick seemed to work?   
“God, I’m so glad you don’t stutter anymore,” Karkat says, and that’s the catalyst, falling comfortably back into conversation with his old friends. “I’d like that, though. Seeing everyone.”

Sollux, conversely, looks so supremely irritated by the idea of seeing all of his friends, that his eye twitches. “Good, I get to see all you losers again.” 

Tavros looks unimpressed. “I have to deal with you on a daily basis, so shove it, please.”

Sollux could hiss with his tongue out like a lizard, just then, and nothing would seem amiss. God, Karkat has weird friends. Fucking 3D glasses. 

“Only because you have to work with me. In honesty, I hate all of you like burning.”

“Sollux, shove it up your ass. Everyone hates you, too,” Karkat pipes up, acerbic, and there’s a beat where everyone looks at him in shock. He seems to not… know if he overstepped a line. But that delivery was so natural and reflexive, like he’d done it hundreds of times before. 

Of course, then Sollux starts to laugh. “Nice! Classic KK, right back here with us. Gonna be great having someone else with sense in the group. Missed you, nerdlord.”

Karkat’s face dissolves into relief as you watch him. 

The professor comes up, then, and opens the door for everyone. That’s your cue to lead Karkat into the classroom, and sit down in the middle of the back row.

When you get home, all Karkat wants to do is push you down on the rug in the foyer and curl up halfway on top of you. This patch of sun is so nice and warm. 

“You cleaned this rug yesterday, right?” He asks. 

“Just vacuumed it cause of the cat hair.”

“Good enough.”

You can tell how glad he is to have it just be the two of you, in this quiet old house with the birds singing outside. Turning and curving your body to fit around him, you nuzzle his neck. 

“You did so good today, bro.”

“Shut up, you.”

“Alright, quiet time. After I let you know that your friends are super weird.”

“Like yours are much better! Rose has a thing for wizards. None of my friends have a thing for wizards.”

“Fuck wizards,” you say, then something occurs to you. “And witches.”

Karkat makes a face. “Literally no fairy tale will ever be the same for me.”

You crack up, and he silences you by fitting his hand over your mouth. 

You lick his hand.

“Ah, fuck, gross, Dave.”

“You like it.”

“I know that’s supposed to be cute, but I definitely do not.”

You’re just soulfully looking into his peepers, and the light catches them again, just like on his birthday. Which he only belatedly told you was his birthday, by the way. The little niggling sense of Deja-vu pricks the backs of your nostrils, and you wait for just a second before speaking your mind about it.

“So, speaking of witches.”

“Yeah?” Karkat looks like he very much does not want to talk about this. 

“What happened to Terezi?”

“What do you mean?”

“Stop avoiding the question. Like where did she go? I only saw her the once, in the taxi. But… Has she talked to you at all since the curse was lifted?”

Karkat is quiet, and lets his gaze fall to your chest. One of his hands fucks around with the necklace you’re wearing today. 

“No.”

He looks conflicted, relieved, sorrowful, and scared. 

Birds are still chirping. His breathing is so soft and warm on your skin. 

“It’s okay to be sad. She _was_ your only real conversation partner for a few years. That can really affect a dude,” You murmur into his hair. 

Karkat sighs. 

“It wasn’t just that. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. What if she comes back, and says that it’s all a trick? What if she turns me gray again and takes me with her?”

“Why would she do that? You fulfilled your part of the contract and she hers. That’s like, fantasy magic 101.”

“I don’t want to be a _monster_ again, Dave,” Karkat whispers.

It’s raw, and grating, his voice. 

“You weren’t a monster. Just had, y’know, a bad rash,” you joke, and he punches you in the chest a little.

“Shut up, Dave.”

“Besides. Even if she did come to change you back?”

He blinks and sighs, going up on one elbow as if not expecting a continuation.

But you do. You continue. “I’d still love you, no matter what.”

Karkat climbs over you, forcing you to roll back on the Persian rug. He’s still halfway reclined, like God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He frames your face with his elbows, and leans down to press his mouth to yours. Like an angel, the corona around his hair makes a halo, with the window and the blue sky as a background. Fucking poetic.

He pulls away, noticing how you’re not moving or really kissing him back.

“What?” He asks.

“You love me too,” you say.

“Yeah I do.” He says back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! this is the official conclusion of my first ever long(ish) fic! (well i spy started before this one but this one ended first haha) Sorry for posting so early/late but I couldn't wait, it was itching at me!
> 
> I love you all, you inspire me so much and I hope you all have a wonderful day and weekend and year! Much hugs and thank you so much for sticking with me through this, and thank you as well for your comments and kudos and even for reading!
> 
> I'll see you next time!
> 
> -Marlena

**Author's Note:**

> [Here](http://royalrastafariannaynays.tumblr.com/) is a link to my blog if you want to see updates or talk to me about my fics!


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